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contrivances, all of them, for effecting the required elimina- 

 tion once or twice a year by a method more or less agreeable, 

 but which would not be necessary had food suitable to a 

 sedentary life only been taken. Many a man might indeed 

 safely pursue a sedentary career, taking only a small 

 amount of exercise, and yet maintain an excellent standard 

 of health, if only he were careful that the " intake " in 

 the form of diet corresponds with the expenditure which 

 his occupations, mental and physical, demand. Let him 

 by all means enjoy his annual pastime, and profit by it 

 to rest his mind and augment his natural forces, but not 

 for the mere purpose of neutralising the evil effects o 

 habitual dietetic wrong doing. 



It is for this large and increasing class of the com- 

 munity, who are emphatically brain-workers, that fish 

 furnishes an appropriate food ; and when we reflect that 

 the tendency of civilisation here and elsewhere is slowly 

 but surely to develope mental activity, and to dispense 

 with laborious handicraft, that all advance in individual 

 as well as corporate well being is commensurate with, and 

 indeed is effected by the substitution of brain-work for 

 mechanical labour, we may see in this great and systematic 

 investigation of the world's fish supply, a notable sign of 

 the times. I regard it as a natural and necessary product 

 of an advancing civilisation, as the inevitable result of the 

 age and its needs, and certain to have been evolved thereby 

 sooner or later. 



A form of food which exists in unimaginable profusion 

 on our own shores ; one which has been hitherto for the 

 most part but an agreeable appendage to the daily table of 

 a few, ought I think to be more generally recognised as 

 peculiarly adapted to the wants of a very large, influential, 

 and increasing part of our population. 



