1792+ on animal and vegetable food. 167 
lived than the Europeans, as Chardin pretends to have 
remarked f, the reason of it certainly is not in their 
vegetable diet ; for even he confefses that they are 
liable to fewer distempers than the Europeans : nor 
probably in an excefsive indulgence in sensual pleas 
sures; for this propensity to voluptuousnefs, which: 
seems excefsive to Europeans, is an impulse of their 
nature; but rather in the more quickly ripening, 
and more quickly exhausting climate of Hindostan. 
Moreover, the Hindoos themselves, by the permif- 
sion they grant to their nobles, or warriors, to eat. 
~ flefh, seem tacitly to allow that a moderate use of 
animal food, even in their climate, affords, if not 
-more health, at least more strength ; and what Mac- 
kintofh supposes, is by no means impofsible, that the 
degs of the Europeans are stronger than those of 
the Hindoos, because the former are fed with flefh,, 
and the latter not {. 
The farther we proceed from the confines of the 
torrid zone towards the poles, the greater diminu- 
tion we perceive in the inexhaustible fertility of the 
soil, and the productivenefs of the fruits of the earth ;. 
and on the other hand, the variety and the use of 
animal victuals. All the countries that lie in Asia 
and Africa, partly too in America, (theugh this 
quarter of the globe, in this likewise, differs from the 
ancient world,) between the 23d and 35th to the goth 
degree of north latitude, compose the warmer half 
of the temperate zone ; and their inhabitants, in re- 
gard to their diet, more or lefs resemble us, or the 
t Description of the nations of Rufs'a, vol. iii; p. 32+ 
} Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, vol.'', p. 67. 
