FOSSIL FOOD 283 



eats on an average about ten times as much salt as we 

 actually require. In this respect popular notions are as 

 inexact as in the very similar case of the supply of phos- 

 phorus. Because phosphorus is needful for brain action, 

 people jump forthwith to the absurd conclusion that fish 

 and other foods rich in phosphates ought to be specially 

 good for students preparing for examination, great thinkers, 

 and literary men. Mark Twain indeed once advised a 

 poetical aspirant, who sent him a few verses for his criti- 

 cal opinion, that fish was very feeding for the brains ; he 

 would recommend a couple of young whales to begin upon. 

 As a matter of fact, there is more phosphorus in our daily 

 bread than would have sufficed Shakespeare to write 

 ' Hamlet,' or Newton to discover the law of gravitation. 

 It isn't phosphorus that most of us need, but brains to burn 

 it in. A man might as well light a fire in a carriage, because 

 coal makes an engine go, as hope to mend the pace of his 

 dull pate by eating fish for the sake of the phosphates. 



The question still remains, How did the salt originally 

 get there ? After all, when we say that it was produced, 

 as rock-salt, by evaporation of the water in inland seas, we 

 leave unanswered the main problem, How did the brine in 

 solution get into the sea at all in the first place ? Well, one 

 might almost as well ask, How did anything come to be 

 upon the earth at any time, in any way '? How did the sea 

 itself get there ? How did this planet swim into existence 

 at all ? In the Indian mythology the world is supported 

 upon the back of an elephant, who is supported upon the 

 back of a tortoise ; but what the tortoise in the last resort 

 is supported upon the Indian philosophers prudently say 

 not. If we once begin thus pushing back our inquiries 

 into the genesis of the cosmos, we shah 1 find our search 

 retreating step after step ad infinitum. The negro preacher, 

 describing the creation of Adam, and drawing slightly 



