FOOD AND PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT. 169 



birth. We have no desire to elaborate the point, but the question 

 arises, Why is the Bengali unfit for the fighting line when other inhabit- 

 ants of the plains exposed to, and suffering from, all the disabilities that 

 Doctor Kellogg enumerates, but living on a superior diet, are capable 

 of exhibiting the firmest courage and of maintaining untarnished the 

 great fighting traditions of their race? Thus we have the Sikhs, famous 

 throughout the world for their endurance and fighting qualities, inhabit- 

 ants of the hottest plains of India, yet men of splendid physique and 

 full of energy; the Dogras, Jats, Eajputs, all well known for their own 

 special qualities on the Indian frontier, or wherever courage, endurance 

 and determination are called for. These races labor under the disad- 

 vantages advanced by Doctor Kellogg to explain the relatively poor 

 development and lack of endurance of the Bengali, but we have obtained 

 no evidence from a study of these people of the correctness of his opinions. 



Even in the various classes of these and allied races differences in 

 physique, muscular development, hardiness and all those qualities that 

 go to make up the perfect soldier can be detected. We believe that diet, 

 and particularly the level of nitrogenous metabolism attained, has an 

 immense influence on the formation of those most desirable charac- 

 teristics of the races whence is drawn our best fighting material. 



We have made extensive inquiries on the same lines among the hill 

 tribes of Bengal and have no hesitation in asserting that the evidence 

 obtained confirms and corroborates the view put forward as to the role 

 of assimilable protein and its determining influence on the physical 

 development and character formation of a people. We took up the 

 different tribes inhabiting the hills around Darjeeling and contrasted, 

 as far as possible, the physique and general characteristics of the several 

 races. While there is no doubt but that climate has a great deal to do 

 with the higher scale of general development and capabilities of these 

 tribes as compared with those of the plains, this is not the whole story as 

 is brought out by a comparison of the several classes living under practi- 

 cally identical conditions, but with a difference in diet forming the one 

 conspicuous influence on their respective attributes. 



We do not wish at present to go into details of the work carried out 

 on these hill tribes. Suffice it to say that the Bhutia, by far the most 

 capable of these people in those occupations requiring great muscular 

 exertion, attain a nitrogenous metabolism much higher than that of 

 any other tribe, or, indeed, any other race we have investigated. Just 

 as was the case with the inhabitants of the plains, so we find with the 

 races in the hills that variations in the level of nitrogenous metabolism 

 appear to be the determining factor of the several causes that go to 

 relegate, fix, and maintain the position of a tribe or race in the scale of 

 mankind. 



The close relationship between the nutritive value of the several 



