FOOD AND FEEDING 197 



wliicli we flavour up unwholesome food, so as to deceive 

 and cajole the natural palate. Yet, after all, it is a pleasant 

 gospel that what we like is really good for us, and, when 

 we have made some small allowances for artificial condi- 

 tions, it is in the main a true one also. 



The sense of taste, which in the lowest animals is dif- 

 fused equally over the whole frame, is in ourselves and 

 other higher creatures concentrated in a special part of 

 the body, namely the mouth, where the food about to be 

 swallowed is chewed and otherwise prepared beforehand for 

 the work of digestion. Now it is, of course, quite clear 

 that some sort of supervision must be exercised by the 

 body over the kind of food that is going to be put into it. 

 Common experience teaches us that prussic acid and pure 

 opium are undesirable food-stuiTs in large quantities ; that 

 raw spirits, petroleum, and red lead should be sparingly 

 partaken of by the judicious feeder ; and that even green 

 fruit, the bitter end of cucumber, and the berries of deadly 

 nightshade are unsatisfactory articles of diet when con- 

 tinuously persisted in. If, at the very outset of our 

 digestive apparatus, we hadn't a sort of automatic premoni- 

 tory adviser upon the kinds of food we ought or ought not 

 to indulge in, we sliould naturally commit considerable 

 imprudences in the way of eating and drinking — even 

 more than we do at present. Natural selection has there- 

 fore provided us with a fairly efficient guide in this respect 

 in the sense of taste, which is placed at the very threshold, 

 as it were, of our digestive mechanism. It is the duty of 

 taste to warn us against uneatable things, and to recom- 

 mend to our favourable attention eatable and wholesome 

 ones ; and, on the whole, in spite of small occasional 

 remissness, it performs this duty with creditable success. 



Taste, however, is not equally distributed over the 

 whole surface of the tongue alike. There are three 



