COMPONENT PARTS OF VEGETABLES. 



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Wood bread.^-A. palatable and nutritious bread is made of the beach 

 and the wood of other trees, destitute of turpentine, in the following 

 manner All the soluble parts are washed from the wood, reduced to 

 fine powder by frequent maceration and boiling. It is then repeated- 

 ly heated in an oven and ground like the grains. It then has the smell 

 and taste of corn flour, though not quite so white ; but, like that, it will 

 not ferment without leaven, which is best made of grain flour. The 

 bread thus made and well baked is spongy and uniform. A thick, 

 trembling and nutritious jelly is also made by boiling the wood flour in 

 water and seasoning it as usual. 



The composition of vegetable secretions may be stated as follows. 



FOOD OF THE ANCIENTS. 



In the early condition of society, population was scattered and sparce, 

 from the nature of the food on which man subsisted and the difficulty 

 of obtaining it. The increase must have been slow in comparison 

 with the present period, and especially in view of the increased casu- 

 alties and consequently comparative increase of deaths, as the result 

 of the arts both of war and of civil life. 



In the tropical climate people have required, or desired, little animal 

 food ; and with those in what has been termed savage life, animal 

 food has been procured from wild beasts by the chase. This, it has 

 been suggested, may have arisen with man from seeing one superior 

 animal pursue, destroy and devour another. But it is in a more civil- 

 ized state that man has devoted his attention to the cultivation of ve 

 getable food ; and his advancement in this has ever kept pace with 

 his advancement in civilization. Animals, as a consequence, were 

 domesticated, and especially those which are gregarious and the flesh 

 of which is the most palatable and nutritious, such as neat cattle, 

 swine, sheep, &c., and so also with fowls. Husbandry, therefore, ne- 

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