Page:Fruits and Farinacea the Proper Food of Man.djvu/73

Rh Travellers and historians inform us that these people use very little flesh as compared with the barbarous and semi-civilized nations generally, and that in many places their fields, cultivated like gardens, supply them with ample nutritive material for an almost exclusively vegetable diet.

We may find in various parts of the world, examples to illustrate the same principles, as well as the particular ones I have selected. Thus the Esquimaux, whose leading articles of food are animal flesh, fats and oils, exhibit a strong prevalence of the animal over the mental powers, and a correspondingly weak development of the moral sentiments and intellectual faculties. Dwarfishness of body, stupidity of mind, grossness of sense, with excessive alimentiveness, are the prominent characteristics of this animal man.

The Kalmuck Tartars are fair samples of omnivorous or all-devouring men-animals, with a preponderance towards the carnivorous. Although horse-flesh is with them a principal article of food, yet they eat indiscriminately of any other animal it is convenient to procure, with such vegetable food as comes in their way. Travellers uniformly represent them as hideous