At Surinam, enough bananas may be bought for two or three cents to support a negro for a week.

If the climate of the valley of the Mississippi would admit of the cultivation of the banana at the above rate, as there is said to be land enough for eight millions of farms of one hundred and sixty acres each, one half, or four millions, would sustain a population of thirty-two thousand millions, which is more than thirty times the present population of our globe.

§ IV. POWERS OF NUTRITION DIMINISHED BY OVER-EATING.

Mr. S. tells me that when he visits Saratoga Springs for relaxation, and allows himself to eat more than usual, his face has a higher color, and he invariably loses flesh. Thus the functions of nutrition and waste lose their equilibrium.

Dr. D. S., of Northampton, gives me the case of a child that, from the age of two and a half to three years, was a member of his family. Her appetite was never satisfied; she cried for food a great part of the day, and often left the breakfast-table crying for more, after eating four goodsized potatoes, and a dish of bread and milk. She ate a meat dinner, and bread and milk for supper. She had seven alvine evacuations a day, and the cutaneous and pulmonary exhalations were so offensive as greatly to annoy the whole family, the girl who slept with her making especial complaint.

She was removed from Dr. S.'s to the interior of New York in the month of May; was extremely emaciated, and the lady who had the care of her says "that in the September following she weighed only fifteen pounds; in the meantime she had become encrusted with sores, from

the crown of the head to the sole of the foot." After this she was fed exclusively upon baked apples; the humor subsided, the skin became smooth and fair, and early in December she weighed twenty-three pounds. She became quiet, good-natured, and intelligent.

VEGETABLE products contain all the materials of nutrition required by the human constitution.

Among those whose attention has not been turned to the subject of diet, it is a common opinion that animal food is essential to the health and strength of man. Such, however, is far from being the case; for, as Dr. Lambe remarks, "In every period of history it has been known that vegetables alone are sufficient for the support of life, and that the bulk of mankind live on them to this hour." Mr. Lawrence says, "That animal food renders men strong and courageous, is fully disproved by the inhabitants of Northern Europe and Asia, the Laplanders, Samoides, Tungooses, Buracts, and Kamtschadales, as well as by the Esquimaux in the northern and the natives of Terra del Fuego in the southern extremity of America, who are the smallest, weakest, and least brave people of the globe, although they live almost entirely on flesh, and that often raw."

The finely-developed forms, the remarkable symmetry, and the great strength and activity of many tribes in the islands of the Southern Pacific, have engaged the atten

tion of travellers. "The people of the Marquesas and Washington Islands," says Langsdorf, "excel in beauty and grandeur of form, in regularity of features, and in color, all the other South Sea islanders...... The men are almost all tall, robust, and well made. Few were so fat and unwieldy as the Otaheitans; none so lean and meagre as the people of Easter Island. We did not see a single cripple or deformed person, but such general beauty and regularity of forms, that it greatly excited our astonishment. Many of them might well be placed beside the most celebrated chef d'œuvres of antiquity, and they would lose nothing by the comparison."

At Nukahiwah, one of the Marquesas Islands, this voyager saw a youth named Mu Fau, twenty years of age, whose height was a little over six feet and seven inches (English measure), whose strength and activity were as great as his stature. "Though he had never till now been on board a European ship, he ran up the mainmast many times together, of his own accord, and threw himself into the sea, to the great astonishment of the spectators."

Pausanias declares that "the earlier athletæ, who contended in the public games of Greece, ate no animal food."

"The Saracens, under Mohammed and his immediate successors, possessed the most vigorous and hardy constitutions, which enabled them to encounter great fatigue, and rendered them the terror of their enemies. Their chief drink was water, and their food consisted, in a great measure, of milk, rice, and the fruits of the earth. The celebrated Omar, the second caliph from Mohammed, lived wholly on vegetable food, and was remarkable for the acuteness and energy of his intellect, the hardiness

his

constitution, and the entire control he possessed over his bodily appetites."

"At Jenna," say the Landers, "about fourteen degrees east of Cape Mesurado, the inhabitants have an abundance of bullocks, pigs, goats, sheep, and poultry, but they prefer vegetable food to animal. Their diet is, indeed, what we should call poor and watery, consisting chiefly of preparations of the yam and Indian corn; notwithstanding which, a stronger or more athletic race is nowhere to be found. Burdens with them, as with most of the natives of many parts of the continent, are invariably carried on the head, which it is more than likely occasions that dignified uprightness of form and stateliness of walk, so often spoken of by those acquainted with the pleasing peculiarities of African women."

In some districts in Spain, the peasantry lead a cheerful and happy life, living entirely on milk and vegetables. Swinburne says that "bread steeped in oil, and occasionally seasoned with vinegar, is the common food of the country people, from Barcelona to Malaga." The Marquis of Alcala, a Spaniard by birth, says that "the laborers on the fields live in a most extraordinary way in the eyes of the English; that is, they eat no animal food." After giving an account of a curious vegetable pottage eaten by them, he says: "Their breakfast is bread and cheese in winter, and bread and fruits in summer; their drink is "water at all seasons; yet the Spanish peasants work hard, and they are undoubtedly the healthiest, liveliest, and bestformed peasantry I have ever seen, and I have travelled a great deal in Asia, Europe, Africa, and almost the whole of the West Indies."

Thousands of the Irish, at this moment, live upon potatoes and water, with a little salt. And yet the constitu