170 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



broadly designate the animal and the vegetable. I see here an 

 excellent opportunity for advancing the claims and the ethical 

 teaching of the Vegetarian and kindred Societies, whose aims are 

 directed to the inculcation of the notion that the proper food for 

 man is to be obtained entirely from the vegetable kingdom. But 

 whilst I wish to be true to myself, and to my principles, by pro- 

 fessing that I most heartily agree with this doctrine, having put its 

 ethics into the practice of my own life for over twenty years, still 

 I must not take up the time of a meeting of this character with 

 the elucidation or advocacy of the principles of vegetarianism any 

 more than it serves my immediate purpose. But, according to 

 the title I have already quoted, we have nothing to do with the 

 animal kingdom in our consideration and discussion of our 

 subject, and we may therefore come at once to the region of the 

 vegetable world, whilst we take a somewhat closer view of all 

 that it embraces and implies. 



The food stuffs from the vegetable world are far more im- 

 portant than appears without some consideration. The order 

 Graminea), for instance, dealing with the grasses over the whole 

 face of the globe, holds a wonderful place in the production of foods 

 for the human race. There is a remarkably wide range in the 

 field purely vegetable; thus we maybe reminded how we take the 

 tubers of one family of plants and the tuberous roots of others, 

 the leaf stalks of some, such as Bhubarb, the flowering stems of 

 others, and the seed vessels or the fruit of most ; and this all 

 constitutes an interesting subject for closer study ; but to-day we 

 are speaking of fruit. Now fruit, botanically speaking, I need 

 not remind you, would include all the cereals, or the marketable 

 produce of cereals, such as Wheat, Barley, Oats, and so on, as 

 well as the legumes and pulses — Peas, Beans, and the like — and 

 in this relationship, in common with a good number of persons 

 who have studied dietetics, I hold that fruit is the highest form 

 of food for the human family. That is to say, those portions of 

 plants which do not come into direct contact with the soil or with 

 manurial agents, but which are borne, carried, developed and 

 matured in the air and sunlight, and, as a rule, have within 

 them the vital properties of the renewal of the life of the species 

 in some form or other. These portions of the plants and trees 

 about us form a most valuable contribution to man's physical 

 needs in the direction of appetite. But to-day we do not take so 



