RUSSIA AND GERMANY. 57 



two-thirds of a bushel of wheat, ten bushels of rye, with barley, peas 

 and meat; and, for a family of eighteen persons, 144 bushels of grain, 

 six bushels of peas, one ox, four cows, ten sheep, with some herrings. 



In Holland the products of the dairy and potatoes are the chief sup- 

 port of the people. Potatoes constitute almost the entire food of the 

 people of the eastern and northern provinces. The peasants add a 

 gruel made of oats or rye, and they are afforded salted meat once or 

 twice a week. Their bread is chiefly rye. Cheese, buttermilk, beans, 

 buckwheat, with a proportion of garden vegetables, and occasionally 

 pork, are eaten by the farmers and a part of the artizans. 



In Belgium grain and live stock are considerably abundant. Rye is 

 the principal corn bread ; it is to wheat as 2 to 1, the same to oats, 7 

 to 2 of barley, to 2 of buckwheat, to 1 of potatoes, and 1 of pulse. 

 Buttermilk, with rye flour, is a favorite dish with farmers. The ani- 

 mal food is mostly pork and salt fish. Milk and cheese, with vegeta- 

 bles, butter or lard, a weak beer, and occasionally fish and flesh, are 

 the common diet in the country. Beans stewed in milk are much ad- 

 mired. Rye affords the principal bread of all the north of Germany. 

 In the south, wheat is raised to considerable extent, with some maize. 

 The great body of Germans are said to be decidedly a pork eating peo- 

 ple, and the principal vegetable is cabbage. Bacon, raw herrings, sau- 

 sages, with beer or sour wine, constitute, with these, the bulk of the 

 food of the German family of thirty millions. Still, the poor obtain 

 meat of no kind oftener than once or twice a week. Eight millions of 

 hogs are said to be annually slaughtered in Germany. The sheep have 

 been estimated at twenty millions and the neat cattle at over twelve 

 millions; Prussia, west of the Elbe, having 1,328,000, and Austria 

 2,800,000. 



In Russia, rye and oats are grown abundantly in the northern, and 

 wheat in the southern provinces. Yet the mass of the peasantry are 

 otherwise poorly fed. Barley, rice and maize are also cultivated in 

 some parts. The chief food of the farm laborer is rye bread, buck- 

 wheat, sour cabbage soup, with a few vegetables, and occasionally fish 

 and sometimes flesh. The more wealthy have salt fish, cheese, honey, 

 &c. In Poland the food is very similar. 



The truth and purport of the remark that, " wherever a loaf is ad- 

 ded, there's a man born," is every where observable in the increase of 

 health and population. All the variations in mortality are seen in 

 Europe to be produced by the price of bread. These facts should in- 

 duce a comparison between the mortality of our countrymen and Eu- 

 ropeans. Improvements in the arts of agriculture and the consequent 

 increase of vegetable and animal food in some countries of Europe, to- 

 gether with the laws applicable to food, accounts for the gradual in- 

 crease of population, as may be observed in France. The increase of 



