888 THE FOOD OF NATIONS DETERMINED 



is better calculated to promote health, strength, 

 beauty, long life, and the highest developement 

 of the intellectual and moral faculties. But we 

 have already seen that the aliment of nations, 

 like their clothing, habitations, manners, customs, 

 social economy, complexion, and general organi- 

 zation, have been determined chiefly by climate 

 and geographical position, to which the institu- 

 tions of lawgivers and founders of religious creeds, 

 have been, to a greater or less extent, accommo- 

 dated. And it will be found, that in every part 

 of the world, nature has supplied in greatest 

 abundance those descriptions of food best suited 

 to the well being of its inhabitants. 



For example, the tropical regions abound with 

 rice, yams, dates, sugar cane, and an exhaustless 

 variety of fruits ; but owing to a deficiency of 

 the more nutritive species of grass and grain, 

 they are less adapted to the multiplication of 

 domestic animals than temperate climates, which 

 abound with wheat, rye, barley, oats, potatoes, 

 rich grasses, the olive and vine, with a great 

 variety of fruits and vegetables : while the polar 

 regions afford neither grass, grain, nor fruits, and 

 no vegetable aliment excepting a few stinted 

 mosses, but abound with reindeer, bears, seals, 

 the walrus, and other cetacea. It is therefore 

 evident, that nature has provided a large pre- 

 dominance of vegetable food in the torrid zone, 

 of animal food in the frigid zone, and a due mix- 

 ture of both in the intermediate latitudes, con- 



