ON THE VARIETIES OF VEGETABLE FOOD. 225 
life of a vegetable has for its object, as it were, the reproduction 
of its species, in other words, the production of seeds; and you 
will find that seeds contain, under all circumstances, a larger 
amount of nitrogenous substances than any other form of vege¬ 
tables. Now, lOOlbs. of beef contains 251bs. of gluten. The 
following table will shew the amount of nitrogenous matter 
contained in different varieties of food :— 
Table of Flesh-prodncing Principles in different Varieties of Food. 
lOOlbs. 
Gluten, Fibrine, 
or Albumen, 
lbs. 
Unazotized 
matter. 
lbs. 
Flesh . 
. 25 
0 
Blood . 
. 20 
0 
Beans . 
. 31 
5Ii 
Peas . 
. 29 
54 
Lentils. 
. 33 
48 
Potatoes. 
. 2 
25 
Oats. 
. 11 
68 
Barleymeal . . . . 
..... 14 
68i 
Hay . 
. 8 
681 
Turnips . 
. . , . . 1 
9 
Carrot . 
. 2 
10 
Red-beet . 
. 4 .. 
81 
When you refer to beans and peas, you find that they are a 
stronger food than flesh itself. The seeds of all leguminous 
plants contain a large proportion of the flesh-producing principle. 
Peas and lentils generally are a stronger food than even beef; 
and a man who was fed upon them would, other circumstances 
being the same, do a larger amount of work than one who was 
fed upon an equal weight of animal flesh. When you come to 
analyse the potato, you soon discover why an Irishman, in order 
to get through the same amount of work as an Englishman, is 
obliged to eat a much larger quantity of food. He has to eat 
such a large amount of food, because the potato contains onlv a 
small amount of the flesh-producing principle. The amount of 
nitrogenous matter will vary in different samples of the same 
vegetable, grown under different conditions; but the figures 
which I have given will, in the main, be found correct. 
Another lesson which may be learnt from what I have advanced 
is the necessity of mixing different kinds of food together. If 
the Irishman were to mix some other kinds of food with his 
potato, he would obtain the same amount of nourishment much 
more cheaply than by swallowing such enormous quantities of 
that one species of vegetable. A man who uses with his bread 
a portion of cheese, which contains from 30 to 32 per cent, of 
VOL. XXV. H h 
