VERY RAPID IN CARNIVORA. 75 



tiplication of the human species. The cultivation of 

 our crops has ultimately no other object than the pro- 

 duction of a maximum of those substances which are 

 adapted for assimilation and respiration, in the smallest 

 possible space. Grain and other nutritious vegetables 

 yield us, not only in starch, sugar, and gum, the carbon 

 which protects our organs from the action of oxygen, 

 and produces in the organism the heat which is essential 

 to life, but also in the form of vegetable fibrine, albu- 

 men, and caseine, our blood, from which the other parts 

 of our body are developed. 



Man, when confined to animal food, respires, like 

 the carnivora, at the expense of the matters produced 

 by the metamorphosis of organized tissues ; and, just 

 as the lion, tiger, hyaena, in the cages of a menagerie, 

 are compelled to accelerate the waste of the organized 

 tissues by incessant motion, in order to furnish the mat- 

 ter necessary for respiration, so, the savage, for the 

 very same object, is forced to make the most laborious 

 exertions, and go through a vast amount of muscular 

 exercise. He is compelled to consume force merely 

 in order to supply matter for respiration. 



Cultivation is the economy of force. Science teaches 

 us the simplest means of obtaining the greatest effect 

 with the smallest expenditure of power, and with given 

 means to produce a maximum of force. The unprofit- 

 able exertion of power, the waste of force in agricul- 

 ture, in other branches of industry, in science, or in 

 social economy, is characteristic of the savage state, or 

 of the want of cultivation. 



