FOOD AND FEEDING 211 



flavourings. When you come to find of what they are 

 made up, they consist generally of sweets or bitters, inter- 

 mixed with certain ethereal perfumes, or with pungent or 

 acid tastes, or with both or several such together. In this 

 way, a comparatively small number of original elements, 

 variously combined, suffice to make up the whole enormous 

 mass of recognisably different tastes and flavours. 



The third and loweso part of the tongue and throat is 

 the seat of those peculiar tastes to which Professor Bain, 

 the great authority upon this important philosophical sub- 

 ject, has given the names of relishes and disgusts. It is 

 here, chiefly, that we taste animal food, fats, butters, oils, 

 and the richer class of vegetables and made dishes. If we 

 like them, we experience a sensation which may be called 

 a relish, and which induces one to keep rolling the morsel 

 farther down the throat, till it passes at last beyond the 

 region of our voluntary control. If we don't like them, 

 we get the sensation which may be called a disgust, and 

 which is very different from the mere unpleasantness of 

 excessively pungent or bitter things. It is far less of an 

 intellectual and far more of a physical and emotional 

 feeling. We say, and say rightly, of such things that we 

 find it hard to swallow them ; a something within us (of a 

 very tangible nature) seems to rise up bodily and protest 

 against them. As a very good example of this experience, 

 take one's first attempt to swallow cod-liver oil. Other 

 things may be unpleasant or unpalatable, but things of this 

 class are in the strictest sense nasty and disgusting. 



The fact is, the lower part of the tongue is supplied 

 with nerves in close sympathy with the digestion. If the 

 food which has been passed by the two previous examiners 

 is found here to be simple and digestible, it is permitted to 

 go on unchallenged ; if it is found to be too rich, too 

 bilious, or too indigestible, a protest is promptly entered 



