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every fruit may presently be for our meat, as in tlie days of our 

 first parents. In the meantime, however, man is strictly and po- 

 tently omnivorous in the nineteenth century ; and we may well ques- 

 tion whether the vegetable kingdom is at present sufficiently com- 

 prehended to supply the varied qualities of food which are necessary 

 for our support; for how few of the said herbs and fruits con- 

 tinue to be eatable. We cannot banquet like the first men ; until 

 we get back the golden earth. As it is, the encroachment of drugs 

 and poisons has driven our esculents into a penfold, and we are 

 fortunate if from the exceptions to the kingdoms, we can furnish 

 our table. Assuredly the woods, fields, and gardens must be more 

 humane, which no doubt they are willing to re-become; the stomach 

 also must put forth the hands of a more inventive agriculture, be- 

 fore the vegetarian crusaders can be allowed to wave their leafy flag 

 over the city of the cooks. But by dabbling too much, or prema- 

 turely, in their limping pultaceous diet, we should become not the 

 children, but the abortions of Paradise. 



It has been suggested by Dr. Prout, that the milk which is our 

 first aliment — an aliment certainly human, if not animal — and 

 which is the food prepared by nature herself, is the type of all food 

 whatever; that it contains certain alimentitious principles in com- 

 bination, which are but repeated, and their combination re-attempt- 

 ed, in the most elaborate cuisine. His analysis of the components 

 of the milk, is, into oily, saccharine, and albuminous matter; and 

 after investigating our food and its combinations, he finds that his 

 view regarding milk is borne out by the instinctive tastes and artificial 

 cookery of mankind. According to this, all our meals are but as- 

 pirations to our original milk. There may however be different 

 analyses of milk besides the partly chemical one he has mentioned, 

 and it remains to be seen whether other views will equally comport 

 with this reference of food to the lacteal type. We can scarcely 

 doubt that the idea has a truth; it wears so organic an aspect, and 

 takes its stand with such powerful innocence at the head of a science 

 of alimentation. Moreover nature, the mighty mother, offers her- 

 self breastwise to all her little natures ; she swells in landscape and 

 undulating hill with mammary tenderness; each creation is a dug 



