A HARD-WORKING DIET. 93 
class of courageous, adventurous individuals, who are 
too volatile to fix any settled steady course. 
The addition to our export trade would be great, 
the saving of money enormous, as for many years 
past we are drained of millions of bullion annually 
remitted to foreign states as the price of our daily 
subsistence. 
March 10, 1813. 
As an illustration of the way in which the use of T. Venner, 
. A 1050. 
fish was studied before the chemistry of foods was : 
studied, there is given the following long extract from 
T. Venner’s Via Recta ad Vitam Longam (1650) :— 
Or Fisu. Section 5. 
It is because fish increaseth much gross, slimey, and 
superfluous flegm, which, residing and corrupting in the 
body, causeth difficulty of breathing, gout, the stone, the 
leaprie, the scurvy, and other foul and troublesome affects of 
the skin. Wherefore I advise men that are much delighted 
with the use of fish, that they be careful in the choice of 
it; as that it be not clammy, slimy, neither of a very gross 
and hard substance, not oppleted with much fat (for all fat 
is of itself ill and noisome to the stomach; but of fish it 
is worst), neither of ill smell and unpleasant savour. Where- 
fore of sea-fish the best swimmeth in a pure sea, and is 
tossed and hoist with wind and surges; for by reason of 
continual agitation it becometh of purer and less slimey 
substance. And for the same cause, the fish that is taken 
near a shore that is neither earthy or slimey, is of a harder 
digestion, and of a more slimey and excremental substance. 
The fish also that taketh itself from the sea to the mouths 
of great rivers and swims in fresh water, quickly become 
better or worse. If in slimey rivers they lose much of their 
