ON THE PLACE OF FISH 



IN A 



HARD-WORKING DIET. 



THE astonishment of Moliere's much -quoted M. 

 Jourdain in ' Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme,' on learning 

 that " prose," of which he so wanted to know the mean- 

 ing, was what he had been talking all his life, might We live on 



Carbon, 



probably find a parallel in the minds of many people, Hydrogen, 

 if, on asking what Carbon, Hydrogen and Nitrogen Nitrogen, 

 mean, they for the first time learnt they had been 

 living on them all their lives that though we find 

 them doing many other things in the world besides 

 being our food, our bodies are to a large extent made 

 up of them and that it is the union of them in 

 our bodies with the Oxygen we breathe that gives us 

 the power to do any work at all, that keeps up our 

 warmth, maintains our circulation, and performs other 

 functions essential to our animal life. 



If they further learned how close seems to be the And the 



amounts of 



connection between the power to do hard work of them we re- 



quire vary 



different degrees and the proportions of Carbon, with the 

 Hydrogen, and Nitrogen taken in food, and that Jo r k wedo. 

 many of our public dietaries have been for some years 

 past calculated on the knowledge obtained about this 



