1876. 
The Great Dietetic Reform. 
27 
not that we are adapted for a mixed diet, but that our 
“ natural food ” is something holding a middle place between 
animal and vegetable substances. Such substances, we are 
further told, are fruits, roots, and seeds — bodies, we must 
observe, all essentially vegetable, and widely differing in 
their chemical composition. It is further asserted that as 
our nearest zoological affinities, the apes, are vegetarians, 
our flesh-eating habits must be a departure from what 
Nature enjoins. 
In reply to all this we must point out that the organisa- 
tion of an animal throws a far less clear light on its habits 
than was supposed in the days of Cuvier. Nor is the matter 
much more conclusively settled by zoological affinities. 
Among the bears, for instance, we find the polar bear as 
purely carnivorous as the lion or tiger. The dreaded grizzly 
of western North America is scarcely, if at all, less exclu- 
sively a flesh-eater. But in tropical and sub-tropical 
climates we find several bears which live chiefly upon roots, 
grain, fruits, and honey, and rarely, if ever, consume animal 
food, except they can find no other. Now between these 
bears, differing thus widely in their respective diet, we find 
no well-marked distinction in the structure and length of 
the intestinal canal, or in the nature of the teeth. Again, 
among the rodents, we find the hare and the rabbit purely 
herbivorous, whilst the mouse and the rat are omnivorous — - 
not merely devouring dead animal matter when it falls in 
their way, but sometimes attacking and killing living 
animals.* Now the structure of the rat and the mouse 
certainly gives but very slender, if any, reason to suppose 
that they are better adapted for an animal diet than the 
hare or the rabbit. In view of such faCts we submit there 
is nothing either in man’s dentition and the structure of his 
intestinal canal, or in his morphological affinity with the 
gorilla and the chimpanzee, to prove him unfitted for the 
use of animal food. He certainly approaches as nearly to 
the carnivorous type as does the mouse, the rat, or the 
swine, which latter animal — even in a wild state — is semi- 
carnivorous. Surely, therefore, all vegetarian arguments 
* That rats will kill and devour guinea-pigs, chickens, cage-birds, &c., is a 
matter of common notoriety. As regards mice, their predatory habits are less 
generally known. The present writer, many years ago, caught a field-mouse, 
and placed it in a colledting-box to carry home as a delicacy for some captive 
vipers. In the same box were three lizards ( Lacerta crocea). On arriving at 
home we found the lizards all dead — each killed by a bite on the throat. It is 
quite possible that they may, in like manner, overpower their great enemies 
the viper and the Austrian adder ( Coluber austriacus), when the latter are be- 
numbed with the winter’s cold. Mice, likewise, wage war with scorpions, 
with varying success. 
