APPENDIX II. 175 



pies and potatoe pies are also very common pieces 

 de resistance during harvest-time, and whenever very 

 hard work is required from the men. The speaker 

 well remembers being profoundly impressed with 

 the dinners of the navigators employed in the con- 

 struction of the Lancaster and Preston Railway : 

 they consisted of thick slices of bread surmounted 

 with massive blocks of bacon, in which mere streaks 

 of lean were visible. Dr. Piccard states that the 

 chamois hunters of Western Switzerland are ac- 

 customed, when starting on long and fatiguing 

 expeditions, to take with them, as provisions, no- 

 thing but bacon-fat and sugar, because, as they say, 

 these substances are more nourishing than meat. 

 They doubtless find that in fat and sugar they can 

 most conveniently carry with them a store of force- 

 producing matter. The above tables affirm the 

 same thing. They show that *55 Ib. of fat will per- 

 form the work of 1*15 Ib. cheese, 5 Ibs. potatoes, 

 1*3 Ib. of flour or peameal, or of 3 J Ibs. of lean beef.* 

 Bonders, in his admirable pamphlet On the Con- 

 stituents of Food and their Relation to Muscular 

 Work and Animal Heat, mentions the observations 

 of Dr. M. C. Verloren on the food of insects. The 

 latter remarks : " Many insects use during a period 

 in which very little muscular work is performed 

 food containing chiefly albuminous matter ; on the 

 contrary, at a time when the muscular work is very 

 considerable, they live exclusively, or almost exclu- 

 sively, on food free from nitrogen." He also mentions 



* 10 parts fat = 115 parts cheese = 900 parts potatoes 

 = 114 parts flour = 804 parts lean beef. 



