COMPULSORY VEGETARIANS. 5 



selves is a kind of comfort. We therefore compassion- 

 ately remind these distressed Frenchmen, that though 

 to be omnivorous is one of the distinctions betwixt man 

 and the brutes, yet, in fact, only a small proportion of the 

 human race is actually carnivorous ; and that for more 

 than sixteen hundred years the entire population of the 

 earth was restricted to a vegetable diet ; for not till after 

 the Flood did the Almighty say to Noah and his sons, 

 "Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you ; 

 even as the green herb have I given you all things." 

 (Gen. ix. 37.) As an additional crumb of comfort for 

 non-flesh-eating Frenchmen, we add, that the idea of 

 " John Bull" living on animal food is unhappily a fic- 

 tion. " If ' John Bull ' means two-thirds of the popula- 

 tion, ' John Bull ' is living on vegetable diet, and not 

 more than one-third of him is nourished by meat/'* 

 Speaking of the Dorsetshire peasantry, Mr Thornton, in 

 his work on Over-Population, observes : u As for meat, 

 most of them would not know its taste, if once or twice 

 in the course of their lives on the squire's having a 

 son and heir born to him, or on the young gentleman's 

 coming of age they were not regaled with a dinner of 

 what the newspapers call 'Old English Fare.' Some of 

 them contrive to have a little bacon in the proportion, 

 it seems, of a half-pound a-week to a dozen persons ; 

 but they more commonly use fat, to give the potatoes a 

 relish ; and, as one of them told Mr Austin, they don't 

 always go without cheese." In Scotland, the mass of 

 the people are compulsory vegetarians, oatmeal and 

 milk being the national fare. Pigs are kept by the 

 Scottish peasantry very generally, but often they are 

 not eaten by their families, but sold, owing to the high 

 price given for pork by kramers ; -j- that is, men who 

 go through the country buying pigs, butter, and eggs 



* Symon's 'Arts and Artizans.' 



t Kramer is in Germany the term for a petty huxter, or small 

 merchant. It is curious to find the word similarly applied in 

 Forfarshire. 



