146 JOUKNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



To some the surreptitious enjoyment of the fruit of the jam-pot and 

 the orchard was at times, however, marred by recollections of after-pains 

 on being caught. 



Poets and painters and fairy story tellers always bring in fruits, 

 luscious and beautiful, whenever they want to depict times of happiness 

 and enjoyment. Well is it, therefore, for us to remember that fruit is 

 derived from the word which means enjoyment. 



Now, the popular idea is that fruit has only to do with pleasure, and 

 has nothing to do with nutriment, and it is this popular fallacy which I 

 want to help to explode. 



Many people have an idea that dessert is only an after-dinner 

 dalliance ; whereas, in effect, the best and hardest of work can be done 

 on a fruit meal. 



The one redeeming feature of our after-dinner dessert is that children 

 are allowed to come down for this, so that to them it becomes — and 

 rightly becomes — a happy meal. 



.There are several ways in which fruit is important as food. 



First. It is itself a food, and, if rightly selected, a complete and full 

 nutriment — for every condition of the body, in every climate, and under 

 every condition of work and of constitution and of health and of digestion 

 — can be obtained from a fruit dietary. 



Second. Fruit is of essential value in assisting other foods to be 

 digested. 



Third. Fruit is of the utmost value in helping the body to eliminate 

 waste matters which produce debility and old age. 



Fourth. Fruit is almost the only food possible in some forms of 

 disease, and is largely curative as well as nutritive. 



In the first place, fruit, when rightly selected, forms a complete 

 nourishment for the body in a most assimilable form. The elements 

 necessary for bodily sustenance have been class fied by many authorities 

 in various ways, but the one which is most generally accepted divides 

 food into the following classes : — 



First. The aqueous matters. 



Second. The saccharine matters. 



Third. The oleaginous matters. 



Fourth. The albuminous matters. 



Fifth. The saline matters. 



Milk and the yolk of eggs, both of which provide complete nutrition 

 for embryonic and early life, are composed of the above substances. 

 Are these substances found in fruits in a proportion suitable for human 

 food, and in a form suitable for human digestion ? 



It is not enough to say that strawberries contain sugar, and bananas 

 starch, and melons water, and Brazil nuts oil, and peanuts albumen ; 

 but the percentage of their composition must be carefully noted, other- 

 wise we may find ourselves dealing w^ith fruit like the man of Bromley 

 with his beer, who, being found all day long imbibing ale in a public- 

 house, explained his action by saying that he had been to a lecture 

 where the lecturer had been giving the composition of foods, and had 

 impressed upon his audience that to get the necessary amount of nitrogen 

 which the body needs daily from beer it would require a man to drink 



