380 OF FOOD, AND THE DIGESTIVE PROCESS. 



carbonaceous portion of the " waste" of the tissues. Here, then, the demand 

 for histogenetic material being at its maximum, and that for combustive mate- 

 rials at its minimum, the former supplies all that is requisite for the latter. 

 Again, the Esquimaux and other dwellers upon the Arctic seas find in the bodies 

 of the whales, seals, &c., whereon they subsist, that special supply of the very 

 best combustive material, which alone can enable them to maintain their exist- 

 ence in a climate where the thermometer is for many weeks or months in the 

 year at 40 or even lower, and where the amount of heat which must be gene- 

 rated within the body is four or five times that for which a diet of bread will 

 suffice. On the other hand, the general experience of the inhabitants of warm 

 climates seems in favor of a diet chiefly or entirely vegetable; and its peculiar 

 suitableness appears to consist in its affording an adequate supply of the plastic 

 alimentary substances, in combination with farinaceous matters that give the 

 requisite bulk to the food ( 448), without affording more combustive material 

 than the system requires the quantity of starch which undergoes conversion, 

 and is introduced as sugar into the circulation, being apparently governed rather 

 by the demands of the respiratory process, than by the amount ingested, and 

 the remainder being voided again unchanged. 



403. The mixed diet, to which the inclination of Man in temperate climates 

 seems usually to lead him (when circumstances allow that inclination to develop 

 itself freely), appears to be fully conformable to the construction of his dental 

 and digestive apparatus, as well as to his instinctive propensities. And whilst 

 on the one hand it may be freely conceded to the advocates of " Vegetarianism," 

 that a well-selected vegetable diet is capable of producing (in the greater num- 

 ber of individuals) the highest physical development of which they are capable, 

 it may on the other hand be affirmed with equal certainty, that the substitution 

 of a moderate proportion of animal flesh is in no way injurious, whilst, so far as 

 our evidence at present extends, this seems rather to favor the highest mental 

 development. If, indeed, we take a comprehensive survey of the conditions of 

 the various races of Man at present inhabiting the earth, we cannot help being 

 struck with his adaptiveness to a great variety of circumstances, as regards cli- 

 mate, mode of life, diet, &c. And we can scarcely avoid the conclusion, that 

 the Creator, by conferring upon him such an adaptiveness, intended to qualify 

 him for subsisting on those articles of diet, whether animal or vegetable, which 

 are most readily attainable in different parts of the globe; and thus to remove 

 the obstacle which a necessary restriction to any one kind of food would have 

 otherwise opposed to his universal diffusion. If we were to bring together the 

 habitual diet-scales of the several races of men which people the surface of our 

 globe, we apprehend that the diversities which they would present would be 

 scarcely less strange than those which exist among the regimens of the most 

 dissimilar species of Mammalia. We should find the purely animal-feeding on 

 the one hand, the pure vegetarians on the other. Among the former we should 

 find some who devour animal flesh, others fish, and others fowl, while others are 

 even insectivorous ; then, again, we should encounter some who devour their food 

 raw, others who cook it; some preferring it immediately that it has ceased to live, 

 while others do not relish it until it has become almost putrescent. So among the 

 vegetable-feeders, we should find some subsisting upon soft fruits, others upon hard 

 grains, others again chiefly upon succulent herbage, and others upon roots so tough 

 as to require artificial means for their reduction. In the various devices by which 

 man has succeeded in availing himself of these, and in the various tastes which 

 have led some to avail themselves of articles of food which others would loathe, 

 we see the evidence of the same wise Design, as that which has given to different 

 tribes of animals their respective preferences; and we deduce from the whole the 

 conclusion, that Man is left by his Creator at perfect liberty to select that kind of 

 nutriment which he finds most suitable to his tastes and to his wants; the former, 



