Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/403

Rh moderate proportion, is more nutritious and wholesome than chiefly animal food. For those whose labor is chiefly mental, and whose muscular exercise is inconsiderable, still less of concentrated nitrogenous food is desirable. A liberal supply of cereals and legumes, with fish, and flesh in its lighter forms, will better sustain such activity than large portions of butcher's meat twice or thrice a day. Then again it is absolutely certain, contrary to the popular belief as this is, that while a good supply of food is essential during the period of growth and active middle life, a diminished supply is no less essential to health and prolongation of life during declining years, when physical exertion is small, and the digestive faculty sometimes becomes less powerful also. I shall not regard it as within my province here to dilate on this topic, but shall assert that the "supporting" of aged persons, as it is termed, with increased quantities of food and stimulant, is an error of cardinal importance. These things being: so, a consideration of no small concern arises in relation to the economical management of the national resources. For it is a fair computation that every acre of land devoted to the production of meat is capable of becoming the source of three or four times the amount of produce of equivalent value as food, if devoted to the production of grain. In other words, a given area of land cropped with cereals and legumes will support a population more than three times as numerous as that which can be sustained on the same land devoted to the growth of cattle. Moreover, the corn-land will produce, almost without extra cost, a considerable quantity of animal food, in the form of pigs and poultry, from the offal or coarser parts of vegetable produce which is unsuitable for human consumption.

Thus this country purchases every year a large and increasing quantity of corn and flour from foreign countries, while more of our own land is yearly devoted to grazing purposes. The value of corn and flour imported by Great Britain in 1877 was no less than £63,536,322, while in 1875 it was only just over £53,000,000. The increased import during the last thirty-two years is well exhibited in the following extract: "In 1846 the imports of corn and flour amounted to seventeen pounds weight per head of population; in 1855 they had risen to seventy pounds per head; and in 1865 to ninety-three pounds weight per head of population. Finally, in 1877 the imports of corn and flour amounted to one hundred and seventy pounds weight per head of population of the United Kingdom."

Lastly, those who are interested in the national supply of food must lament that, while Great Britain possesses perhaps the best opportunities in the world for securing a large and cheap supply of fish, she fails to attain it, and procures so little only that it is to the great majority of the inhabitants an expensive luxury. Fish is a food of great value; nevertheless, it ought in this country to be one of the