24 Vegetarianism : [January, 
processes of selection, concentration, and elaboration are 
carried still further. The animal then serves for the food 
of men. We know that not merely the ultimate, but even 
the proximate, constituents of plants and of animals are 
very similar. There are vegetable albumenoids closely 
analogous to those of the animal system. There are vege- 
table and animal fats scarcely to be distinguished from each 
other. It is even true that vegetable substances — such as 
peas, beans, and lentils — may contain a larger percentage 
of combined nitrogen than the flesh of animals. But as a 
rule animal matters can be digested and assimilated more 
easily, with a less expenditure of the resources of the 
system, than their vegetable analogues. All this points in 
a direction opposite to the vegetarian theory. But these 
dietetic reformers cannot openly commit themselves to the 
view that animal matter is innutritious, indigestible, or inju- 
rious, because they tolerate, after all, the use of milk, butter, 
cheese, and eggs ! To declare milk unnatural and injurious 
as food for a mammalian animal has hitherto seemed to 
them a somewhat daring statement. But cheese is certainly 
a less digestible food than beef or mutton, and has even been 
pronounced one of our national dietetic sins. Yet once 
admitting these favoured animal substances, the difficulty 
is to draw a logical boundary. If the egg, why not the 
chicken ? The two are one and the same being, in two 
different stages of development. The only tangible distinc- 
tion-— viz., that the egg can be eaten without inflicting pain 
-—is, if true, scarcely any ground why its aCtion on the 
system of the eater should be modified. We are told that 
milk is a secretion expressly intended for food. Be it so ; 
but to assert that the flesh of the ox is not equally adapted 
to be the food of man is simply to beg the question at issue. 
It is even possible to go further. The milk of the cow is 
undoubtedly the natural food of the calf, but why should it, 
any more than beef, be pronounced the natural food of 
man ? To rob the calf of its mother’s milk is, from a sen- 
timental point of view, perhaps as great an outrage — as 
decided an infringement of the “ normal arrangements of 
Nature ” — as to rob it of its life. To compel a female 
animal, by artificial treatment, to give milk when she is not 
suckling her young is likewise “ unnatural.” It is quite 
possible that the secretion so obtained may assume a morbid 
character, and may convey the seeds of consumption, or at 
least of an impaired vitality, to the human beings by whom 
it is consumed. Pus cells have frequently been detected in 
milk. Thus one of the few kinds of animal matter which 
