CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 331 
which, it is affirmed, have not even an analogy to the laws presiding 
over inorganic matter, viz. those of Physics and Chemistry. To 
many articles of which latter creed we seriously incline ; and, with- 
out entering into the discussion, may just indicate that if those 
whom we, for distinction sake, but with no disrespect, somewhat 
paradoxically call the physical or material physiologists, are right 
in their assumptions, it would seem they ought not to be puzzled by 
the enquiry, “ What is life?” more than by the question, What is 
motion, or electricity, or gravitation? All of which, with even 
a scanty knowledge, we know greatly more of than “ life ;? and yet 
they must be sorely distressed for a definition of life so excel- 
lent as to permit no exception to be taken to it. A curiosity to 
know more of ourselves than observation, unaided by science, affords, 
is natural to all mankind; and therefore it is that the professional 
inquisitors are not the monopolists of an interest only not universal : 
this fact, and the popularity of the subject, by its appealing to every 
man, in some shape, about dinner-time, have rendered DIGESTION an 
object of diligent and daily perquisition. Taste and utility invest 
it with consequence in both health and disease: the first, to recon- 
cile what is pleasant with that which is harmless in our food ; the 
second, to obviate or relieve disorders by means of diet. Man is by 
design an omnivorous animal ;* and it can scarcely consist with the 
recognition of a fact so indisputable to say, a priori, that any food 
(not poisonous) is unwholesome for him who is by omniscience 
adapted to derive support and nourishment from all; and who, 
without such benevolent and wise provision, would perish of hunger 
in regions where he notoriously subsists and flourishes on substances 
which, in the imaginations of the more refined or more ignorant of 
his remote fellows, excite feelings of horror or disgust ; many, indeed, 
of whom would actually starve on the revolting viands, unless, like 
* < As the human race exists in more parts of the globe than any other 
kind of animal, we should have been but ill provided for if we had been des- 
tined to subsist on either description of food alone ; Whereas man now inha- 
bits some countries which afford either vegetable or animal food only. Man 
is by far the most omnivorous of all animals, capable not only of feasting on 
luxurious combinations derived from each kingdom, but of subsisting with 
health and vigour on nearly one kind of the most simple food. Thus, to 
mention a very few instances, many at present live on vegetables only, as the 
tubera of solanum (potatoes), chesnuts, dates, &c. the first families of man- 
kind most probably subsisted for a long period merely on fruits, roots, corn, 
and pulse. The nomadic Moors have scarcely any other food than gum se- 
nen the inhabitants of Kamtschatka, and many other shores, scarcely any 
other than fish. ‘The shepherds in the province of Carraccas in South Ame- 
rica, on the banks of the Orinoko, aa even the Morelachs in Europe, live 
almost entirely on flesh. Some barbarous nations devour raw animals. This 
cannot be denied to have been formerly the case with the Samojedes, the 
Esquimaux, and some tribes of North America. Other nations are no less 
remarkable in their drink. The inhabitants of many intertropical islands, 
especially in the Pacific Ocean, can procure no sweet water, and instead of it 
drink the juice of cocoa-nuts. Others take only sea-water: and innumera- 
ble similar facts clearly prove man to be omnivorous.” 
