fish per day, and they are a fine, big and strong race. The Japanese
labourer lives on similar food. In India rice is the food most in use,
though many other cereals are eaten there. Other races live chiefly on
fruits. It appears that the digestive organs will perform their functions
perfectly with the mildest flavoured food. There is nothing surprising in
this. The strongest, most intelligent, and largest animals are those which
feed on grass, herbs and fruits. Even the African lion is no match for the
gorilla. The lion and tiger are capable of great strength, but they cannot
put it forth for long periods as can the herbivora. Our most useful
animal, the horse, can exert much more muscular energy, weight for weight,
than any of the carnivora. The cost of feeding one of the herbivora is
much less than that of one of the carnivora of the same weight. This is so
whether we take the cost of purchasing the food; or the expenditure of
time, labour and energy on the part of man or of natural forces in the
production of the food. Herbs, roots, corn and fruit are produced much
more abundantly and freely than the corresponding quantity of sheep, deer,
etc., on which the carnivora feed.

The restlessness, craving for novelty, and love of excitement, so
characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon, and to a less extent of some other
European races, has its correspondence in the food of these races.
Highly-seasoned and nitrogenous foods act as a stimulant and favour
spasmodic, and for a time perhaps, great intellectual and physical
exertion, with a succeeding period of exhaustion. Simpler food favours
long, sustained, uniform muscular strength, clearness of intellect, and
contentment. Let no one misunderstand us; we do not assert that all who
live on simple food have either clear intellects or are contented, because
there are other factors besides food, but that such qualities are more
easily retained or obtained under that condition. It is well known that
the over-fed and badly fed are the most irritable and discontented Those