Page:Fruits and Farinacea the Proper Food of Man.djvu/78

72 54. If the structure of any animal be of a character decidedly carnivorous or decidedly herbivorous, there is little difficulty in determining its place in the scale of creation; but "if we find, on careful and accurate examination, that the organs under our inspection are neither like those of carnivorous nor like those of herbivorous animals, we are to conclude that the animal whose they were belonged to neither of these orders; and if the animal belonged to an extinct or unknown species, the natural history of which is also wholly unknown, and cannot now be studied, all correct principles in comparative anatomy most clearly and decidedly demand that we should diligently explore the animal kingdom, and, if possible, find some type with which the organs under our examination correspond. But if no exact type of our specimen can be found, then we must ascertain in what order of animals alimentary organs are found most nearly resembling those of our specimen; and when this is done, we must conclude that the animal to which our specimen belonged came nearer to that order than to any other known order of animals, in its natural dietetic character; and in all that our specimen varies from that order, and approaches to a resemblance of some other known order, we are to conclude that the animal to which it belonged differed from the former, and approached to an agreement with the latter, in its natural dietetic character. But if we find an order, with the alimentary organs of which our specimen fully corresponds, then we are irresistibly led to the conclusion that the animal to which it belonged was of the same dietetic character with that order; and if now we can, by studying the natural history or observing the natural dietetic habits of that order, fully ascertain the natural dietetic character of the animals belonging to it, then we know the natural dietetic character of the animal to which our specimen belonged, just so far as the most rigorously correct principles and reasonings of comparative anatomy can teach us.

55. "Now, then, with the strictest application of these principles, and this mode of reasoning, to the question before us: What is the natural dietetic character of man, according to the real and true evidence of comparative anatomy? In considering this question, it is important that we should remember that, whatever may be true concerning the natural dietetic character of man, there is neither now on earth, nor has there been for many centuries, any portion of the human race, so far as we know, which have lived in all respects so perfectly in a state of nature, or in a state to which the constitutional nature of man is most perfectly adapted, as to afford us an opportunity to study the true natural history of man, and learn his natural dietetic character from his natural dietetic habits; and, therefore, so far as this question is anatomically considered, man must, in strict propriety, be