A HARD-WORKING DIET. 423 



class of courageous, adventurous individuals, who are 

 too volatile to fix any settled steady course. 



The addition to our export trade would be great, 

 the saving of money enormous, as for many years 

 past we are drained of millions of bullion annually 

 remitted to foreign states as the price of our daily 

 subsistence. 



March 10, 1813. 



As an illustration of the way in which the use of T. Venner, 

 fish was studied before the chemistry of foods was 

 studied, there is given the following long extract from 

 T. Venner's Via Recta ad Vitam Longam (1650) : 



OF FISH. Section 5. 



It is because fish increaseth much gross, slimey, and 

 superfluous flegm, which, residing and corrupting in the 

 body, causeth difficulty of breathing, gout, the stone, the 

 leaprie, the scurvy, and other foul and troublesome affects of 

 the skin. Wherefore I advise men that are much delighted 

 with the use of fish, that they be careful in the choice of 

 it ; as that it be not clammy, slimy, neither of a very gross 

 and hard substance, not oppleted with much fat (for all fat 

 is of itself ill and noisome to the stomach; but of fish it 

 is worst), neither of ill smell and unpleasant savour. Where- 

 fore of sea-fish the best swimmeth in a pure sea, and is 

 tossed and hoist with wind and surges ; for by reason of 

 continual agitation it becometh of purer and less slimey 

 substance. And for the same cause, the fish that is taken 

 near a shore that is neither earthy or slimey, is of a harder 

 digestion, and of a more slimey and excremental substance. 

 The fish also that taketh itself from the sea to the mouths 

 of great rivers and swims in fresh water, quickly become 

 better or worse. If in slimey rivers they lose much of their 



