1g2 FISH-CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
In short, we pay for many of our foods according to their 
agreeableness to our palates rather than their values for nour- 
ishing our bodies. At the same time it 1s interesting to note 
that the prices of the materials that make up the bulk of the 
food of the people seem to run more or less parallel with their 
actual nutritive values. Here, as elsewhere, the resultant of the 
general experience of mankind has led slowly and blindly, but 
none the less surely, to the same general result to which accur- 
ate research more understandingly and quickly guides us. 
USE, OF FISH AS #OOD. ~1TS PLACE AN. DIETARIES. 
The chief uses of fish as food are (1) as an economical source 
_of nutriment, and (2) to supply the demand for variety in diet, 
which increases with the advance of civilization and culture. 
As nutriment, its place is that of a supplement to vegetable 
foods, the most of which, as wheat, rye, maize, rice, potatoes, etc., 
are deficient in protein, the chief nutrient of fish. 
The so-called “nitrogenous extractives,” contained in small 
quantities in fish as in other animal foods, are doubtless useful 
in nutrition. The theory that fish is especially valuable for brain- 
food on account of an assumed richness in phosphorus is not 
sustained by the facts of either chemistry or physiology. 
It is an interesting fact, that the poorer classes of people 
and communities almost universally select those foods which 
chemical analysis shows to supply the actual nutrients at the 
lowest cost. But, unfortunately the proportions of the nutrients 
in their dietaries are often very defective. 
Thus, in portions of India and China, rice; in Northern. Italy, 
maize meal ; in certain districts of Germany, and in,some re- 
gions and seasons in Ireland, potatoes; and among the poor 
whites of the Southern United States, maize meal’ and bacon, 
make a large part, and in some cases almost the sole food of 
the people. These foods supply the nutrients in the cheapest 
forms but are all deficient in protein. The people who live upon 
them, are ill nourished, and suffer physically, intellectually and 
morally thereby. 
On the other hand the Scotchman, shrewd in his diet as his 
