256 ANIMAL FOOD RESOURCES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



especially along the northern shores of Europe, Asia, and 

 America, where vegetation is of the scantiest description, 

 fish forms the chief, if not the only, food of the in- 

 habitants. 



Some pertinent remarks on fish supply were lately 

 made in the Lancet : — 



" Whatever may be the nutritious value of fish as food 

 — and we believe that to be very great — it must be 

 evident that a full and cheap supply of fish would react 

 so as to produce a lowering of the price of butcher's 

 meat. The 'purveyors,' as they like to be called, are 

 encouraged, and, in truth, enabled, to keep up the price 

 of flesh because there is nothing to compete with it as a 

 staple of the common food of the people. A revival of 

 the old and healthy habit of living largely on fish would 

 place the meat supply on an entirely new footing. This 

 is manifest on the face of the facts ; but what may not 

 be equally apparent, though it is scarcely less noteworthy, 

 is the consideration that nervous diseases and weak- 

 nesses increase in a country as the population comes to 

 live on the flesh of warm-blooded animals. This is a 

 point to which attention has not been adequately 

 directed. ' Meat ' — using that term in its popular sense 

 — is highly stimulating, and supplies proportionally 

 more exciting than actually nourishing pabulum to the 

 nervous system. The meat-eater lives at high pressure, 

 and is, or ought to be, a peculiarly active organism, like 

 a predatory animal, always on the alert, walking rapidly, 

 and consuming large quantities of oxygen, which are 

 imperatively necessary for the safe disposal of his dis- 

 assimilated material. In practice we find that the meat- 

 eater does not live up to the level of his food, and as a 

 consequence he cannot, or does not, take in enough 

 oxygen to satisfy the exigencies of his mode of life. 

 Thereupon follow many, if not most, of the ills to which 

 highly civilised and luxurious meat-eating classes are 

 liable. This is a physiological view of the food question, 

 and it has bearings on the question of fish supply which 

 ought not to be neglected." 



