206 FOOD AND FEEDING 



we experience sensations of taste proper that is to say, of 

 sweetness and bitterness. In a healthy, natural state all 

 sweet things are pleasant to us, and all bitters (even if 

 combined with sherry) unpleasant. The reason for this is 

 easy enough to understand. It carries us back at once into 

 those primaeval tropical forests, where our ' hairy ancestor ' 

 used to diet himself upon the fruits of the earth hi due 

 season. Now, almost all edible fruits, roots, and tubers 

 contain sugar ; and therefore the presence of sugar is, in 

 the wild condition, as good a rough test of whether any- 

 thing is good to eat as one could easily find. In fact, the 

 argument cuts both ways : edible fruits are sweet because 

 they are intended for man and other animals to eat ; and 

 man and other animals have a tongue pleasurably affected 

 by sugar because sugary things in nature are for them in 

 the highest degree edible. Our early progenitors formed 

 their taste upon oranges, mangoes, bananas, and grapes ; 

 upon sweet potatoes, sugar-cane, dates, and wild honey. 

 There is scarcely anything fitted for human food in the 

 vegetable world (and our earliest ancestors were most un- 

 doubted vegetarians) which does not contain sugar in con- 

 siderable quantities. In temperate climates (where man is 

 but a recent intruder), we have taken, it is true, to regard- 

 ing wheaten bread as the staff of life ; but in our native 

 tropics enormous populations still live almost exclusively 

 upon plantains, bananas, bread-fruit, yams, sweet potatoes, 

 dates, cocoanuts, melons, cassava, pine-apples, and figs. 

 Our nerves have been adapted to the circumstance's of our 

 early life as a race in tropical forests ; and we still retain a 

 marked liking for sweets of every sort. Not content with 

 our strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, currants, apples, 

 pears, cherries, plums and other northern fruits, we ransack 

 the world for dates, figs, raisins, and oranges. Indeed, in 

 spite of our acquired meat-eating propensities, it may be 



