FOOD AND FEEDING 213 



salmon three days running without inconvenience. Even 

 a Spanish stew, with plenty of garlic in i J, and floating in 

 olive oil, tastes positively delicious after a day's mountain- 

 eering in the Pyrenees. 



The healthy popular belief, still surviving in spite of 

 cookery, that our likes and dislikes are the best guide to 

 what is good for us, finds its justification in this fact, that 

 whatever is relished will prove on the average wholesome, 

 and whatever rouses disgust will prove on the whole in- 

 digestible. Nothing can be more wrong, for example, than 

 to make children eat fat when they don't want it. A 

 healthy child likes fat, and eats as much of it as he can 

 get. If a child shows signs of disgust at fat, that proves 

 that it is of a bilious temperament, and it ought never to 

 be forced into eating it against its will. Most of us are 

 bilious in after-life just because we were compelled to eat 

 rich food in childhood, which we felt instinctively was un- 

 suitable for us. We might still be indulging with impunity 

 in thick turtle, canvas-back ducks, devilled whitebait, 

 meringues, and Nesselrode puddings, if we hadn't been so 

 persistently overdosed in our earlier years with things that 

 we didn't want and knew were indigestible. 



Of course, in our existing modern cookery, very few 

 simple and uncompounded tastes are still left to us ; every- 

 thing is so mixed up together that only by an effort of de- 

 liberate experiment can one discover what are the special 

 effects of special tastes upon the tongue and palate. Salt 

 is mixed with almost everything we eat — sal sapit omnia 

 — and pepper or cayenne is nearly equally common. Butter 

 is put into the peas, which have l)een previously adulterated 

 by being boiled with mint ; and cucumber is unknown ex- 

 cept in conjunction with oil and vinegar. This makes it 

 comparatively difficult for us to realise the distinctness of 

 the elements which go to make up most tastes as we 



