Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/463

  The germs of misery, death, disease and crime. No longer now the winged habitants. That in the woods their sweet lives sing away, Flee from the form of man,. ..

 All things are void of terror; man has lost His terrible prerogative, and stands An equal amidst equals. Happiness And science dawn though late upon the earth; Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame.

Lord Byron evidently believed that flesh eating excites men to war and bloodshed; thus he testifies in 'Don Juan' (Canto II.):

 That Pasiphae promoted breeding cattle. To make the Cretans bloodier in battle.

For we all know that English people are Fed upon beef—I won't say much of beer Because 'tis liquor only, and being far From this my subject, has no business here: We know, too, they are very fond of war, A pleasure—like all pleasures—rather dear; So were the Cretans—from which I infer. That beef and battles both were owing to her.

The beginning of the modern vegetarian movement is usually dated from the publication of an essay entitled: 'Return to nature, or defence of vegetable régime' by I. Newton (London, 1811). To the influence of this, the formation of the first vegetarian society by Joseph Simpson in Manchester, England, in 1847, is ascribed; and so far as I am aware the word vegetarian was coined at this time. A similar society is reported to have been formed in the United States in 1850. The use of a vegetable diet had, however, been advocated and practised over a century before, as the following extract from Benjamin Franklin's autobiography testifies. Referring to about the year 1722 he said:

When about sixteen years of age, I happened to meet with a book, written by one Tryon, recommending a vegetable diet. I determined to go into it. My brother, being yet unmarried, did not keep house, but boarded himself and his apprentices in another family. My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconvenience, and I was frequently chid for my singularity. I made myself acquainted with Tryon's manner of preparing some of his dishes, such as boiling potatoes or rice, making hasty-pudding and a few others, and then proposed to my brother, that if he would give me weekly half the money he paid for my board, I would board myself. He instantly agreed to it, and I presently found that I could save half what he paid me. This was an additional fund for buying of books; but I had another advantage in it. My brother and the rest going from the printing house to their meals, I remained there alone, and, dispatching presently my light repast (which was often no more than a biscuit, or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins, or a tart from the pastry cook's, and a glass of water), had the rest of the time till their return for study; in which I made the greater progress from that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension, which generally attend temperance in eating and