The remainder consists of what are known as "extrac- 

 tives," and of various saline and even metallic matters, 

 all of which are essential parts of the animal body. 



It is necessary to observe that when meat is unduly 

 fattened, as very often happens, the above proportions 

 are greatly altered. When the meat is fat pork, for 

 example, reared for bacon making, &c., or beef which is 

 fed in order to secure a prize for size and weight, the 

 products are wholly different, containing largely fat, with 

 less albumen and fibrin, and but little water ; and the pig 

 owes his existence in great measure to the facility with 

 which he produces fat meat for human food, such fat being 

 of special value to use in combination with other foods 

 which contain almost none of it. 



Now let us compare with these animal foods one or 

 two chief products of the vegetable kingdom ; and as a 

 typical example, because familiar to us all, and extensively 

 used, fresh wheaten bread. In one hundred parts of this 

 forty are water, fifty are starch, about eight consist of 

 the nitrogenous principle corresponding to the albuminoid 

 or flesh-forming elements in flesh, and there is but a 

 fraction of fatty matter, the remainder being salts, &c. Fat, 

 as you see, is almost absent in wheat; there is rather 

 more of it in oats ; still more in Indian corn. There is 

 almost none in the potato, about three parts out of four 

 of which are water : the solids consisting mainly of starch, 

 associated with only about two per cent, of the flesh- 

 forming principle. On the other hand, leguminous seeds, 

 as peas, beans, and lentils, contain the flesh-forming 

 principle in even larger proportion than that which is 

 present in wheat, and also in animal food generally, but 

 with very little fat. 



With these broad general statements, put into the 

 simplest form so that we may keep them in view without 



