328 TRAINING. 



entirely upon work. A great many plans have been proposed for 

 keeping down fat, not only in the dog, but in the human subject, 

 and of late Mr. Banting has become famous for that carried out 

 by him at the suggestion of Mr. Harvey. According to him, man 

 can be kept in health upon a diet composed almost exclusively of 

 animal food, two or three ounces of bread or biscuit per day being all 

 that he allows. Time will show how far this theory is correct, but 

 it is pretty clearly made out that it does effect a reduction of fat. 

 With the greyhound no such good would follow, for we all know 

 that there are very few of them which would keep in health if 

 allowed fifteen ounces of flesh per day and only two or three ounces 

 of bread. The experiment has been tried so often with failure as 

 the result, that it is quite useless to repeat it, and ' Bantirigism ' will 

 certainly not succeed in the kennel. Some years ago, Magendie, 

 the great French physiologist, tried a series of experiments upon 

 dogs by feeding them upon flesh from which the juices had been 

 previously washed. He found, however, that they soon pined 

 away and died, and that there is something more wanted to sup- 

 port health than the mere chemical elements composing muscular 

 and bony tissue. So, also, in feeding dogs upon food too highly 

 concentrated, it is found to disagree, and a diet composed of animal 

 jelly and sago, which each contain the principal component parts of 

 the body, is speedily found to disorder the system to an extent 

 which is scarcely to be believed without actual observation. The 

 reason of this is that jelly and sago, as well as washed flesh, are de- 

 ficient in certain saline substances contained in the serum of the 

 blood ; and for the same reason, if dogs are fed upon boiled flesh, 



