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ANIMAL FOOD.

_(For the Mirror.)_


It is generally allowed, that a profusion of animal food has a tendency
to vitiate and debase the nature and dispositions of men;
notwithstanding, the lovers of flesh urge the names of many of the most
eminent in literature and science, in opposition to this assertion.

Plutarch attributed the stupidity of his countrymen, the Boeotians, to
the profusion of animal food which they consumed, and even now, our
lovely, soup drinking, coffee sipping friends on the continent, attribute
the saturnine, melancholy, and bearish dispositions of John Bull, to his
partiality for,

"The famous roast-beef of Old England."

A facetious, philosophical, friend of mine, lately amused me with some
remarks, on the nature and properties of different kinds of food. "We
know," said he, "that one herb produces _this_ effect, and another
_that_; that different species and varieties of plants have different
virtues; and, why may we not infer that the same rule extends to animated
nature; that our fish, flesh, and fowl, not only serve as nutriment, but
that each kind possesses peculiar and individual properties."