“ I am fure," fays old Tryon, “that a man may make a better meal with half a penny-worth of wheat-flower made into pap, and half a pennyworth of bread to eat with it, and a little falt, and be as strong, brisk, and able to perform any labour, as he that makes the best meal he can with either flesh or fifh. So great is the ignorance, folly, blindness, false opinion, and custom of those that call themselves the learned !"*

"The greatest part of mankind," according to fir Hans Sloane, "have their chief fustenance from grains; as wheat, rice, barley, oats, maize, buck-wheat, zea, or spelta, rye; fome from the feeds of a wild grafs call'd gramen mannae in Poland, or from wild oats, or folle avoine, growing in the lakes of Canada, on which the Indians feed; or from the feeds of the feveral forts of millet and pannicum. Some in Barbary feed on palm-oil, others from that drawn from wallnuts or fefamum, which laft is much ufe'd in Ægypt and the Eaft-Indies; and in Engleland

*Miscellanea, p. 149. He effewhere fays, from fome other writeër, "That a piece of bread and cheese, and a cup of good ale after it, nourisheth more than flesh, and affords a firmer fubftance, and makes one ftronger, than he that eats bread and flesh and drinks the fame liquor." (Way to health, P. 31.)

the poorer fort have ftrong nourishment from milk-meats (on which feed the longest liveërs), butter and cheese. Many feed on pulfe, &c. Not to speak of acorns and beech-maft, the food of our fore-fathers, dates, the food of many people in Barbary and Arabia, figs, pistachios. The Sevennois in France feed on cheftnuts, the broth or fruit of which he had hear'd is very nourishing."*

"It may, indeed," fays doctor Adam Smith, "be doubted whether butchers-meat is any where a necesfary of life. Grain and other vegetables, with the help of milk, cheese, and butter, or oil, where butter is not to be had, it is known from experience, can, without any butchers-meat, afford the moft plentyful, the most wholesome, the most nourishing, and the most invigorateing diet."

It is, in fact, perfectly ridiculous and abfurd to pretend that animal food is abfolutely necesfary for the support of fo comparatively diminutive and feeble a being as man, while the largeëft, ftrongeft, and moft powerful, which

* Natural bistory of Jamaica, I, xxi, xxii. He enumerates allmost every species of vegetable that has been, or may be use'd for food; it has been call'd a curious bil of fare. + Inquiry into the wealth of nations, III, 341.

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require fustenance in proportion to their bulk and vigour, the horse, the bul, the camel, the rhinoceros, the elephant, the hippopotamus, are supported entirely by vegetable substanceës."

"There is no necesfity," fays Tryon," for mankind to opprefs, hurry and kil the beasts, and eat their flesh and blood, as many ignorantly affirm; crying out, What fhal we do with them? They wil over-run us, and eat us up, if we do not kil them.* But I answer, That there is no fort of cattle but is otherwise of use, befide to be eaten; and horfeës are not eaten, and yet what nation complains of having too many of them?

"The eating of flesh," he ads, " and kiling of creatures for that purpose, was never begun, nor is now continue'd for want or necesfity, or for the maintenance of health, but chiefly because the high, lofty, fpirit of wrath and fenfuality had goten the dominion in man, over the meek love, and innocent harmless nature, and being

*It is the ftanding argument of the flesh-eaters, and, probablely, likewife, of the Cannibals or Anthropophagi, at this day. The former, however, choose to forget that they breed the animal for the purpose of kiling it; and would have to wait a long time before the berrings and other fifh which they catch at fea, would over-run them on the land.

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fo rampant, could not be fatisfy'd except it had a proportionable food; and, of all others, flesh has the greatest affinity......and, if all men would refrain eating of flesh, there would be no caute for them to complain for want of food; for the Allmighty has, in all particulars, been gracious and bountyful unto all creatures, but more especially unto mankind, for whom he has fpred a plentyful table; furnishing the whole earth with a great multitude or variety of herbs, fruits, grains, and feeds, fit for food, which do afford a nourishment of a most excellent fubftance, and far beyond flesh."*

Under an improve'd fystem of education. children wil be brought up to a vegetable regimen, as being the most natural to man......As vegetable diet has a necesfary connection with many virtues, and excludes no one, it must be of importance to accustom young people to it, feeing its influence is fo confiderable and so hapy on beauty of perfon, and tranquility of foul. This regimen prolongs infancy, and, of confequence, the duration of human life. I have seen an instance of it in an Engleifh youth of fifteen, who had not the appearance of being fo

Way to health, p. 267.

much as twelve. He was a most interesting figure, posfefs'd of health the most vigorous, and of a dispofition the moft gentle : he perform'd the longest journeys on foot, and never loft temper whatever befel him. His father, whofe name was Pigot, told me that he had brought him up entirely under the Pythagorean regimen; the good effects he had learn'd by his own experience."*

In Engleland, notwithstanding the produce of the foil has been, of late, confiderablely increafe'd, by the inclofure of waftes, and the adoption, in many placeës, of a more fuccessful husbandry, yet we do not obferve a corresponding addition to the number of inhabitants; the reason of which appears to me to be the more general consumption of animal food amongst us. Many ranks of people, whose ordinary diet was, in the last century, prepare'd allmost entirely

*St. Pierre, Studys of nature, III, 577. This gentleman was Robert Pigot, efquire, formerly of Chetwynd, in Shropfhire, who refideëd at Geneva; whither, according to the Biographical anecdotes of the founders of the French republic, London, 1797, p. 154, the amiable and eccentrick marquis de Valadi made an excurfion in 1787, and there chance'd to meet with this Engleish Pythagorean, whofe dietetick fystem he immediately adopted, and, for many years after, never tafleëd animal food.