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BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 139 
portions, why then, as was just now said, an enormous amount of the 
food has to be consumed, and much of it worse than wasted, in order 
to supply enough of the one constituent that happens to be most 
needed. According to George Law, the translator of Boussingault’s 
“Rural Economy” (in a note to page 410 of the translation), “the 
Irish peasantry, who live so much on potatoes, have butter-milk with 
them at least, often salt herring; and a laboring man, it is said, will 
consume twelve or fourteen pounds per diem!” So, too, a ration of 
Irish laborers, given by Payen, reads fourteen pounds of potatoes, and 
one pound of milk per day, besides water, and small beer when obtain- 
able. According to Lequerri,* who during a long residence in India 
paid particular attention to the manners and customs of the inhabitants 
of Pondicherry, “the food of the Indians is almost entirely vegeta- 
ble, rice being the basis of it; only the inferior castes eat meat. But 
all eat kari, an article composed of fish and legumes, which is mixed 
with rice that has been boiled in a very little water. It is only by 
having seen the Indians at their meals that any idea can be formed of 
the enormous quantity of rice they can cram into their stomachs. It 
would be impossible for Europeans to eat so much of it at a time: 
they find, moreover, that rice does not nourish them, and they generally 
retain the habit of eating bread.” 
Some old experiments of Boussingault on feeding swine upon pota- 
toes and water alone, and on potatoes plus swill and skim milk, show 
how difficult it is for an animal that is fed upon nothing but a highly 
farinaceous food to eat a sufficient bulk of this food to keep up the 
ordinary vital processes, to say nothing of producing flesh or fat. 
Boussingault found for example that a hog eight months old and 
weighing about 120 lbs., that was allowed to have all the steamed 
potatoes it wished, ate them at the rate of about 15 lbs. of raw 
potatoes per day, and gained about 4 lb. of live weight per day 
on the average, during a term of six months, at the end of which time 
the animal ceased to gain altogether. The increase in weight was 
found to be due in this case to the formation of flesh rather than of 
fat; and it would appear that, although the animal continued to grow 
upon the potato diet, it ceased to gain weight when once fully grown. 
This very hog, with others, had previous to the experiment been gain- 
* Cited by Boussingault, in ‘“ Annales de Chimie et de Physique,” 1838, 67. 
413. . 
