INTRODUCTORY AND GENERAL. 5 



population whicli does not consume meat is not in a 

 Wealthy condition ; they have in themselves a deplorable 

 cause of inferiority in works of strength and of mortality 

 by diseases." * 



Man is the only animal that cooks, and, indeed, hu- 

 manity may be said to be divided into two epochs, that 

 preceding and that following the discovery of cookery. 

 Pre-historic man resembled savages of the present da}-, 

 whether on the Continent of America, in Australia, or 

 Polynesia, where fish, animals, and loathsome insects are 

 eaten raw, as a kind of change from fruits. Man was 

 not, as some savants allege, originally a vegetarian ; the 

 latter is perhaps an artificial kind of alimentation. 

 Brahmins only became frugiferous where agriculture put 

 withirT their reach that kind of food. Vegetables are 

 ■easily consumed by birds and cattle, because they have 

 ^zzards and paunches — appropriate organs, but wanting 

 to man ; hence the necessity of the culinary art, to make 

 rice and millet digestible. But to cook, it was essential 

 to have fire, and for a long time humanity had not dis- 

 covered this element. Indeed, it was even a marketable 

 commodity, and some tribes stUl carry living embers as 

 they camp. 



Dr. W. Roberts tells us that the changes impressed on 

 food by cooking form an integral part of the work of 

 digestion — a part which we of the human race get done 

 for us by the agency of fire-heat, but a part which the 

 lower animals are compelled to perform by the labour of 

 their own digestive organs. 



The late Mr. John Crawfurd, in the "Ethnological 

 Transactions," remarks : — " By his anatomical structure 

 man is an omnivorous' animal, and all the races, when 

 attainable, will equaUy consume animal and vegetable 

 food. A very few, the result of dire necessity, live on 

 animal food onl^ysuch as the Esquimaux, who could not 

 exist amid ice and snows if they did not. No race lives 

 •exclusively on a vegetable diet, for their position has 



'^ Chevalier, " Des forces alimentaiies des Etats," p. 47. 



