Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/94

82 as easily assimilated as the prepared grass which we call beef and mutton."

This has brought me in communication with a very earnest body of men and women, who at considerable social inconvenience are abstaining from flesh-food, and doing it purely on principle. Some people sneer at them, call them, "crotchety," "faddy," etc., but for my own part I have a great respect for crotchety people, having learned long ago that every first great step that has ever been taken in the path of human progress was denounced as a crotchet by those it was leaving behind. This respect is quite apart from the consideration of whether I agree or disagree with the crotchets themselves.

I therefore willingly respond to the request that I should devote one short paper of this series to the subject. The fact that there are now in London nine exclusively vegetarian restaurants, and all of them flourishing, shows that it is one of wide interest.

At the outset it is necessary to brush aside certain false issues that are commonly raised in discussing this subject. The question is not whether we are herbivorous or carnivorous animals. It is perfectly certain that we are neither. The carnivora feed on flesh alone, and eat that flesh raw. Nobody proposes that we should do this. The herbivora eat raw grass. Nobody suggests that we should follow their example.

It is perfectly clear that man can not be classed either with the carnivorous animals nor the herbivorous animals, nor with the graminivorous animals. His teeth are not constructed for munching and grinding raw grain, nor his digestive organs for assimilating such grain in this condition.

He is not even to be classed with the omnivorous animals. He stands apart from all as The Cooking Animal.

It is true that there was a time when our ancestors ate raw flesh, including that of each other.

In the limestone caverns of this and other European countries we find human bones gnawed by human teeth, and split open by flint implements for the evident purpose of extracting the marrow, according to the domestic economy of the period.

The shell-mounds that these prehistoric bipeds have left behind show that mussels, oysters, and other mollusca were also eaten raw, and they doubtless varied the menu with snails, slugs, and worms, as the remaining Australian savages still do. Besides these they probably included roots, succulent plants, nuts, and such fruit as then existed.

There are many among us who are very proud of their ancient lineage, and who think it honorable to go back as far as possible, and to maintain the customs of their forefathers; but they all seem to draw a line somewhere, none desiring to go as far back as to their interglacial trogloditic ancestors, and therefore I need not discuss the desirability of restoring their dietary.