138 WHAT DOES MAN LIVE UPON? 



tuberous vegetables, Potatoes, Sow-breads, Mandioc, Yams, 

 and Tara fColocasia ?J, and lastly, the parenchymatous 

 stems of the Cycadese and Palms, which furnish Sago. 

 The second group includes the fruits rich in sugar and 

 gum, which owe their peculiar cooling properties to malic, 

 citric and tartaric acids, and their delicious flavours to the 

 presence of a small quantity of an aromatic substance ; in 

 addition to our well-known fruits, appear especially the 

 Date, the Banana, and the Bread-fruit, the Sugar-cane, 

 with its juicy stem, and lastly, the saccharine and gummy, 

 fleshy roots, which constitute so large a proportion of our 

 kitchen vegetables. Finally, the third class consists of the 

 oleaginous kernels of various fruits; the Cocoa-nut, the 

 nut of the Chilian Pine, the Brazil-nut, and the many kinds 

 of nut or almond which in Europe pay their tribute, either 

 to hunger or the satisfaction of the palate. Neither must 

 we here forget to enumerate the many beverages, which 

 are almost all derived from the vegetable kingdom. The 

 European cultivates the Vine wherever the climatal 

 conditions do not render it impossible. Cyder, Beer 

 and ardent Spirits are widely distributed. A peculiar 

 problem, indeed, is presented to the psychologist in the 

 remarkable circumstance, that wheresoever the human race 

 is found, in the highest condition of civilization as in the 

 first dawnings of culture (with the exception, perhaps, of 

 some few races, almost more like animals than men), the 

 custom ever exists, of transporting themselves by various 

 means into a higher condition of mental activity, which in 

 its excessive and evil phenomena is called drunkenness. 

 The Maguey- wine, or Pulque, of the Mexicans, the Palm- 

 wine of the Chilians, the beverage prepared from Maize 

 by the inhabitants of the countries of the Orinoco 

 and Amazon, lastly, the Kumiss of the Tartars, prepared 



