MORE FOOD NEEDED. 243 



the London docks their multifarious cargoes ; nor will 

 he say it after seeing, in Christmas week, railway trains 

 rushing into the metropolis laden with the cattle from a 

 thousand hills, and with fowl of every wing ; all soon 

 to disappear in the capacious maw of the million-peopled 

 city ! 



The truth is that man is needing a great deal more 

 every year that he goes on peopling the earth, and ad- 

 vancing in the refinements of civilisation ; and how to 

 provide increase of food for the increase of eaters is in 

 our day the great problem to the solution of which 

 social science is being applied with the greatest zeal, 

 and, let us be thankful, with the most encouraging 

 success. We are in no danger of starving in God's 

 beautiful world, if we will only use our faculties of mind 

 and body in providing food convenient for us. Our 

 difficulty lies in determining what is convenient : we 

 are saucy, and turn up our noses at what is really ex- 

 cellent, palatable, and rich in all elements of nutrition. 

 Have we not demonstrated the satisfaction of all truth- 

 loving souls, as we had fondly hoped, that hippophagy, 

 or eating of horse-flesh, is highly to be commended ? 

 And yet, in all broad Britain, what horse has been 

 eaten ? Not one, we fear. What we know is this : cer- 

 tain ladies look upon us with an aversion which might 

 be justifiable if we had been advocating the child-eating 

 proposal of the facetious Dean Swift. 



And we also fear that our last article on maritime 

 pisciculture, in which we urged the profit of rearing 

 and the pleasure of eating eels, has been equally dis- 

 gusting to all save an enlightened few who, in foreign 

 parts, have got rid of their Scotch prejudices. Now, 

 however, we hope that we are about to treat of what 

 will excite an appetite for hearing, to be followed in 

 due time by the literal inward digestion of the savoury 

 subjects of this communication oysters, namely. And 

 yet, as to the former, an unhappy squeamishness of the 

 inner man hinders some enjoying the " natives," either 



