FOOD OF MAN. 543 



phagi and struthiophagi. Besides these, lie mentions another and less 

 populous tribe, who fed on locusts, which came in swarms from 'the 

 southern and unknown districts. The mode of life, with the tribes 

 described by Agatharchides, does not seem to have varied for the last 

 two thousand years. Although cultivated nations are situated around 

 them, they have made no progress themselves. Hylophagi are still to 

 be met with. The Dobenahs, the most powerful tribe amongst the 

 Shangallas, still live on the elephant; and, farther to the west, dwells a 

 tribe, which subsists in the summer on the locust ; and, at other seasons, 

 on the crocodile, hippopotamus, and fish. 1 



In the infancy of society, as in his own infancy, man was perhaps 

 almost wholly carnivorous; as the tribes least advanced in civilization 

 are at the present day. For a time, he may, in most situations, have 

 confined himself to the vegetable banquet prepared for him by his boun- 

 teous Maker ; but, as population increased, the means of subsistence 

 would become too scattered for him, and it would be necessary to crowd 

 together a number of nutritious vegetables into a small space, and to 

 cultivate the earth, so as to multiply its produce ; but this would imply 

 the existence of settled habits and institutions which could only arise 

 after society had made progress. Probably, much before this ^period, 

 it would have been discovered, that certain of the beasts of the forest, 

 and of the birds of the air, and some of the insect tribes, could minister 

 to his wants, and form agreeable and nutritious articles of diet; and 

 thus would arise their adoption as food. On the coasts of the ocean, 

 animal food was perhaps employed from the period of their first settle- 

 ment; as well as on the banks of the large streams which are so com- 

 mon in Asia, the cradle of mankind. The fish, left upon the land 

 after the periodical inundations of the rivers, or thrown on the sea- 

 coast, would minister to their necessities, without the slightest effort on 

 their part; and, hence, they would have but little incentive to mental 

 or corporeal exertion. This is the cause of the abject condition of the 

 ichthyophagous tribes of old; and of their comparatively low state of 

 civilization at the present day. 2 Again: savages, in various parts of 

 the globe, live by the chase or the fishery; and must, consequently, be 

 regarded as essentially carnivorous. It would not, however, be justifi- 

 able, to regard barbarism as the natural state of man ; nor is it clear 

 what the different writers on this point of anthropology have meant by 

 the term. The Author of nature has invested him with certain prero- 

 gatives, one of which is the capability of rendering the organized king- 

 dom subservient to his wishes and necessities; and, by the invention of 

 the culinary art, of converting various organized bodies into wholesome 

 and agreeable articles of diet, which thus become as natural to him as 

 the restriction to one species of aliment is to the animal. 



It has been remarked, that the exclusive or predominant use of ani- 

 mal or of vegetable food has a manifest effect upon the physical and 

 moral powers. Buffon affirms, that if man were obliged to abstain 

 from flesh in our climates, he could not exist, nor propagate his kind. 



1 Bruce, Travels, 3d edit., v. 83. 



a The Author, in Amer. Med. Intelligencer, i. 99, Philad., 1838. 



