Of Food. 407 



in many places become a very regular culinary process. 

 Kitchens have been built, and large boilers provided and 

 fitted up, merely for cooking for the cattle in the stables ; 

 and I have been assured by many very intelligent 

 farmers who have adopted this new mode of feeding, 

 and have also found by my own experience, that it 

 is very advantageous indeed, that the drinks are evi- 

 dently rendered much more nourishing and wholesome 

 by being boiled, and that the expense of fuel and the 

 trouble attending this process are amply compensated 

 by the advantages derived from the improvement of 

 the food. We even find it advantageous to continue 

 the boiling a considerable time, two or three hours, 

 for instance, as the food goes on to be still farther 

 improved the longer the boiling is continued.* 



These facts seem evidently to show that there is 

 some very important secret with regard to nutrition 

 which has not yet been properly investigated, and it 

 seems to me to be more than probable that the number 

 of inhabitants who may be supported in any country, 

 upon its internal produce, depends almost as much 

 upon the state of the art of cookery as upon that of 

 agriculture. The Chinese perhaps understand both 

 these arts better than any other nation. Savages 

 understand neither of them. 



But, if cookery be of so much importance, it certainly 

 deserves to be studied with the greatest care, and it 



* I cannot dismiss this subject, the feeding of cattle, without just mention- 

 ing another practice common among our best farmers in Bavaria, which I think 

 deserves to be known. They chop the green clover with which they feed their 

 cattle, and mix with it a considerable quantity of chopped straw. They pre- 

 tend that this rich succulent grass is of so clammy a nature that, unless it be 

 mixed with chopped straw, hay, or some other dry fodder, cattle which are fed 

 with it do not ruminate sufficiently. The usual proportion of the clover to the 

 straw is as two to one. 



