158 GLIMPSES OF NATURE. 



minerals, save, perhaps, our salt, we usually get 

 mixed up with our other foods. But as for water 

 well, it is exactly the one food without which (leaving 

 air out of consideration) we cannot attempt to exist for 

 any period worth naming. The evidence on which this 

 assertion is based is very complete in its character. 



Not merely do we know of shipwrecked sailors and 

 entombed miners subsisting on water alone for some- 

 what extensive periods, and feeling relatively well 

 when rescued, but we know of cases of harmless 

 lunatics suffering from delusions who have starved 

 themselves in secret, and who have lived on water 

 solely for thirty, forty, or even fifty days. One may 

 safely assert that all living nature participates in this 

 demand for water as the essential food, leaving the 

 all-surrounding air out of count for the moment. For, 

 to the plants in the window, dryness is a fatal condi- 

 tion ; and even the biggest tree succumbs when a long 

 drought sets in, and no moisture gains access to its 

 tissues. There may be abstinence, total or otherwise, 

 from all other kinds of food (save air), but without 

 water we are literally " nowhere," as the schoolboy 

 puts it. It is the staff of life much more truly than 

 the product of the baker's shop. In this light, then, 

 water takes the first rank as a food ; it is certainly 

 the sheet-anchor of a " good starve." 



If one endeavours to subsist without food and 

 water, life will come to an end, say, in from seven to 

 eight days. But if one elected to live on water (and 

 air), and obtained a plentiful supply of both com- 

 modities, he might live on, as we have seen, starved 

 and meagre, and growing anything but "beautifully 

 less " hour by hour, for thirty, forty, or even fifty 

 days. This much was known long before the Tanners, 



