1 6 Vegetarianism : [January 
The woods and thefmoorlands produce, on our present 
system, a certain amount of human food in the shape of 
game. This amount may not be very great,* but it is still 
an item in the list of production, and if animal diet be pro- 
scribed it must entirely disappear. 
A far more serious consideration is the vast stock of nou- 
rishment for which we are now indebted to the world of 
waters, and which we must renounce if vegetarianism is to 
prevail. Fishes, crustaceans, mollusca, certain amphibians, 
sea-birds, and even aquatic mammalia, enter more or less 
abundantly into the diet of every maritime population. Of 
the total amount of food thus obtained it is difficult to form 
an adequate conception. According to Simmondst the total 
yearly produce of the cod-fisheries of the North-American 
coast alone amounts to 1,500,000 tons of fresh fish. Let us 
suppose that only one-half of this is fit to be eaten, and we 
have 750,000 tons of food which vegetarians ask us to rejeCt. 
Unless they can show us how to make the ocean yield us an 
equivalent amount of vegetable matter, we can only reply 
“ Non y possumus.” 
Hence, then, we fear that the economical advantages 
which vegetarianism seems to offer, if we look merely to 
rich arable soils, will fade away if we take the whole of the 
globe — both land and water — into our consideration. 
Very probably vegetarian advocates will take exception to 
that portion of our argument which refers to the disuse of 
mountain grazing-ground. They will urge that, though 
they rejeCt flesh, they admit milk, butter, and cheese as a 
part of their diet, and that these pasture-lands will therefore 
be made available as heretofore. We will not here, in reply, 
stay to discuss their consistency in thus sanctioning the use 
of matters purely animal — a concession, by the way, which 
improves their cookery much more than their logic. The 
farmer, at present, finds it profitable to keep cattle, and to 
dispose of the milk, cheese, and butter at certain prices ; 
but in doing all this he works under conditions which in a 
vegetarian country would not exist. When a cow ceases to 
give milk in remunerative quantity he fattens her for the 
market. The surplus bulls he can at present utilise as veal 
in their early days, or as oxen when fully grown ; but 
under the vegetarian system he must either let the aged 
cows and the surplus bulls live as pensioners for the rest of 
their lives, or he must — if permitted — destroy them without 
finding a market for their flesh. In either case he will 
* About 70,000,000 rabbits are consumed annually in France. 
f Waste Products and Undeveloped Substances, p. 156. 
