134 AltNTVEESAEY ADDEESS 
made good by an income or supply of an equivalent amount of that 
material. How can we best live in accordance with this law of 
health ? Here it is difficult to avoid being technical. Shortly we 
may say that muscle-material is found both in animal food and in 
vegetable food; mixed, however, with so many other substances 
that we cannot easily make its acquaintance in a separate or 
isolated form. Eat there is one familiar variety of it occurring in 
what is called the white of egg, or, more exactly, albumen; and 
hence all the varieties of it are termed albumen-like or albumenoid 
constituents of food. 'Well, albumenoid substances are met with 
in most vegetable foods, and, generally in a more concentrated 
condition, in all animal foods. They are contained, for example, in 
a steak or chop, or in bread or potatoes. If, however, we have to 
perform a given amount of work, and must do it on a diet of beef 
or mutton on the one hand, or on a diet of bread or potatoes on 
the other, rest assured we shall have to eat more of the vegetable 
than of the animal food: the rules of arithmetic come in here as 
well as the direct laws of nature. Eut while there is no vast 
difference between vegetable food and animal food, science—-which 
is a name for so much of nature’s laws as is at present known— 
has nothing to say in favour either of an exclusively animal diet or 
of an exclusively vegetable diet. Men of science, perhaps in all 
blindness, cannot perceive that far distant time when animals shall 
no longer eat animals; when even dogs shall have ceased to love a 
bone, having become quite altered in nature— 
1 ‘ With longer alimentary canals 
Suited to diet vegetarian.’ 5 
The scientific hygieist fails to picture the period when our successors 
are to look back to the present flesh-eating days with incredulity; 
a period when our descendants’ imaginations— 
‘ ‘ Aiming at fiction called historical, 
Will vainly try to reconstruct the times 
When it was men’s preposterous delight 
To sit astride live horses which consumed 
Materials for incalculable cakes.” 
Before leaving the illustration of health-law afforded by corre¬ 
lative waste and supply of this muscle-material or flesh-material, a 
word must be said respecting, not the quantity, but the quality of 
the muscle-material supplied to the human system. So far as mere 
percentage of flesh-forming material is concerned, few articles of 
animal food excel the common vegetable seeds known as horse- 
beans. Eut man cannot digest the horse-bean; a fact which 
serves to show that to maintain health we must not only select 
