MULTIPLICATION OF THE HUMAN RACE. 515 



cost more both to masticate and to digest. Further, 



to uncivilized men supplies of food come very irregularly. 

 Long periods of scarcity are divided by short periods of 

 abundance. And though by gorging when opportunity 

 occurs, something is done towards compensating for previous 

 fasting, yet the effects of prolonged starvation cannot be 

 neutralized by occasional enormous meals. Bearing in mind, 

 too, that improvident as they are, savages often bestir them- 

 selves only under pressure of hunger, we may fairly consider 

 them as habitually ill-nourished may see that even the 

 poorer classes of civilized men, making regular meals on food 

 separated from innutritive matters, easy to masticate and 

 digest, tolerably good in quality and adequate if not abundant 

 in quantity, are much better nourished. 



Then, again, though a greater consumption in muscular 

 action appears to be undergone by civilized men than 

 by savages; and though it is probably true that among our 

 labouring people the daily repairs cost more; yet in many 

 cases there does not exist so much difference as we are apt 

 to suppose. The chase is very laborious ; and great amounts 

 of exertion are gone through by the lowest races in seeking 

 and securing the odds and ends of wild food on which they 

 largely depend. We naturally assume that because bar- 

 barians are averse to regular labour, their- muscular action 

 is less than our own. But this is not necessarily true. The 

 monotonous toil is what they cannot tolerate; and they may 

 be ready to go through as much or more exertion when 

 it is joined with excitement. If we remember that the 

 sportsman who gladly scrambles up and down rough hill- 

 sides all day after grouse or deer, would think himself hardly 

 used had he to spend as much effort and time in digging; we 

 shall see that a savage who is the reverse of industrious, 

 may nevertheless be subject to a muscular waste not very 

 different in amount from that undergone by the indus- 

 trious. When it is added that a larger physiolo- 

 gical expenditure is entailed on the uncivilized than on the 



