its presence. But how is it with their boys who enter counting-rooms in large cities, or adopt professions of a sedentary character? Have you never noticed how apt these scions of athletic sires are to break down before reaching the meridian of life? Other causes than these inherited impurities may often contribute to this result; but if impurities do exist to any extent, will they not be more likely to bo active, and obtrusively present themselves in the form of disease, internal or external, in the confined atmosphere of the store or office, than on the broad acres of the parental homestead? It may be a question of no little importance, how much the diseases of young men in villages and cities are derived from pork-eating progenitors, who pursued the healthful occupation of tilling the soil and feeding the pig.

Mutton ought universally to be substituted for pork. It is more easily digested, and may be regarded as a healthful meat. Besides, it can be produced at much less expense than pork among the farmers, and yields more nourishment. Sheep need no corn, and can be kept during the winter on hay, turnips, beets, etc. True, pigs will eat what nothing else will, and consume all the slops in the kitchen; but a great deal of corn, or other solid food is required to fatten them for the butcher. Besides, sheep will eat all that is fit for food from the kitchen slops, and their preparation for the slaughter-house is attended with trifling expense.

As a rule, the flesh of herbivorous is more wholesome than that of carnivorous or omnivorous animals. The use of animal food of every kind has been pronounced injurious by many. That it is not necessary for the sustenance of man, in a normal state, I am fully convinced; equally satisfied am I that its moderate use is attended with no physical injury, but almost everywhere it is used to excess. Too much animal food inflames the system, and overloads the blood with the red corpuscle. In our climate, and in Southern latitudes, little or none should be used in summer, and in winter, there is enough heat-producing food, of a vegetable character, to impart sufficient warmth to those preferring vegetable diet. Still, beef, mutton, lamb, poultry, and even horse-flesh may be regarded as wholesome for food, if not eaten to excess. Professor St. Hilaire, of Paris, strongly urges the introduction of the latter as an aliment. He says that during the great French wars, the celebrated surgeon, Larry, was accustomed to give horse-flesh to the wounded soldiers,

and that he attributed their cure in many instances to this nourish ment. The ancient Germans were in the habit of eating horse-flesh, and to this day, shops for the sale of this meat, under the superintendence of a veterinary college, exist by authority in Copenhagen. It is also resorted to by the poor of Vienna, while in Hamburg it commands a high price. The horse is considered a great delicacy in some of the Southern portions of South America, where it is introduced at the festive board as a luxury, equal to a sirloin of beef. There can be no doubt of its utility and cheapness on the battle-ground, where the majestic steed is hourly falling before the destructive cannon-ball. Those who turn up their noses at the idea of eating horse-flesh, are requested to lead a horse from the stable, and a pig from the gutter, and ask themselves which is the more respectable looking candidate for the carver.

If I may be allowed a brief paragraph, to deviate from the legitimate purpose of this chapter, I will remark that the excessive use of animal food is a great social evil. It is a proverbial fact, that mankind are too much given to the brute diversion of fighting. Our halls of legislation are disgraced with personal encounters between gentlemen who are supposed to be far elevated above the brute creation, by their distinguished intellectual endowments. Now, we have as good authority as Professor Liebig, that meat makes men more pugnacious. He says: "It is certain that three men, one of whom has had a full meal of beef and bread, the second, cheese, or salt fish, and the third, potatoes, regard a difficulty, which presents itself, from entirely different points of view. The effect of the different articles of food on the brain and nervous system, is different, according to certain constituents, peculiar to each of these forms of food. A bear kept in the anatomical department of this university, exhibited a very gentle character so long as he was fed exclusively on bread. A few days' feeding with flesh, rendered him savage, prone to bite, and even dangerous to his keeper. The carnivorous are in general stronger, bolder, and more pugnacious than the herbivorous animals on which they prey. In like manner, those nations which live on vegetable food, differ in disposition from those which live chiefly on flesh." Forbearance is a great Christian virtue, and should be cultivated by every enlightened man. Had human beings been intended for fighting animals, their finger-ends would have been decorated with huge unbending nails, and their jaws distend

ed with savage tusks, like the boar. The excessive use of flesh is, therefore, sinful, and leads man to forget his present duty, and his heavenly destiny, because it excites those emotional faculties which are so prone to dethrone reason.

Much has been written, pro and con, as to the necessity of resorting to the animal kingdom for sustenance. It seems to me the vegetarians have the best of the argument. Vegetables possess all the necessary elements of food, and by combination, or eaten in variety, impart more nutrition than animal diet. According to the investigations of Liebig, and other celebrated chemists, peas, beans, and lentils contain more of the blood-forming principle to the pound, than meat; wheat meal contains about as much, and oat meal, barley meal, stale bread, and maize meal, about half as much; and when you seek the heat-forming principle, potatoes contain more than meat, while bread, peas, lentils, barley meal, beans, sago, maize, oatmeal, and rice, yield double and treble the supply to the pound that animal food does. Nearly all vegetables provided for the table contain more solid matter to the pound than meat possesses.

Facts sustain the vegetarian. A large portion of the people of Ireland, in their island home, hardly taste meat. They subsist upon potatoes, oatmeal, and cabbage. Many of the Asiatics mainly subsist on rice and vegetable oils. The Lazzaroni of Naples, with all their uncleanliness, idleness, and vice, maintain a good physical appearance on a diet of bread and potatoes. The Turks live mostly on vegetables, fruits, and nuts. A traveller remarks:-" Chops, substantial soups, joints, any thing on which a Westerner could support nature, are never seen in a Turkish bazaar." We have people living in various parts of the United States who are practical vegetarians, and eschew animal food of every description, excepting it may be eggs, milk, and butter, and some of these people do not use the latter. I once met a hard-meated, healthy young Jew, who subsisted on Graham bread, fruits, and nuts; and to carry out his dietetic rules he hired a room and boarded himself, which he could easily do without cook or housekeeper. D. U. Martin, the vegetable wherryman, gymnast, and phrenologist, tested his strength and endurance by subjecting himself to all sorts of hardships and exposures while pursuing strictly a vegetable diet. He subsequently adopted an exclusively fruit diet, mainly apples, with what results I am unable to state. It sometimes seems as if we only used meats as vehicles

by the Same with which they are affected mimal food a stimulating property which Having beard of vegetarians being made Ayhan send ask. I once induced a vegetarian friend tment on finest and be assured me it produced in emailer to that induced by a slight potation of sende inne war that Irishmen who live exclusively on #ing in the British army are sometimes

t fever," in consequence of their de fet and on a more simulating than that to which they

There&anty, and possibly a real necessity in some then the the the extent, of animal food. This undoubtedly fete fem the Hatice of our ancestry. The child of an inebriate the appetite, and cannot resist the temptation to the pady toxicating beverages, and it may be easily dating parents may at least imagine he and we hont When, during a long line of ancestry, in fact her how the principal article of diet, the necessity may be tead of imaginary. He is like a patient who told me were ord condition, and that medicine was his natural food! Opium eating sometimes becomes a necessity by the perversion of the

disease

by swestin. Whatever may have been the original design of our Creator, to slow mankind in the infancy of its development to live upon the flesh of her animals, I am confident the time will come

when & more beautifully developed and Christianized humanity will look back upon us of this century as a race of cannibals. No man or woman to-day, of noble sentiment and sympathetic nature, unless the habitué of the market, and thus hardened by familiarity with such sights, can pass the stall of the butcher with its display of trunkless beads of calves, pigs, and cattle, and the bleeding and partly flayed carcasses of lambs and sheep, or look upon the white, but blood-stained apron of the meat-man, holding his monstrous knife, without a shudder, and a feeling of self-condemnation that he and she are accessory to this wholesale slaughter of innocent animals. "The dog delights to bark and bite;" it is the instinct of the cat to sneakingly assail and devour animals too weak to resist her prowess; it is in the nature of the huge boa-constrictor to swallow pigeons, rabbits, and other small game by the bushel; it is the habit of the large fish to live upon the smaller ones, etc. But when we ascend from these lower species of the animal kingdom to the noblest work of God, may we not reasonably look for an end to this mutual carnage for the wherewithal to keep the vital machinery in action?

What excuse for man, who can shake from the tree above his head the juicy fruit which is ready to fall ripe into his hand; who can pluck from the vine clusters of delicious grapes containing all the elements of food, prepared only as Old Dame Nature can prepare them; who can plough up the rich sod, and produce by the planting succulent vegetables and fields of

VEGETABLE FOOD.

golden grain, and beneath the surface of the grim soil, esculent roots capable of imparting warmth and nourishment to the body; who can find in the rich meats of abundant nuts, and other oily products of plants and trees, all the oleaginous properties which animal fat supplies; what excuse, I ask, for man, with all these luxuries at hand, loaded with the necessary alimentary constituents, to imitate the murderous instincts of the lower animals, and cannibally live upon animals less powerful than himself! There is one excuse, and only one, that can be presented for a man of this century, namely: