consists of sixteen figs and two small loaves of bread;
for dinner, boiled beans; for supper, broken roasted wheat-grain. They
scarcely ever taste meat.' This is as good as saying that the strongest
men in the world, performing the most arduous work, and living in an
exhilarating climate, are practically strict vegetarians.

Dr. Jules Grand, President of the Vegetarian Society of France speaks of
'the Indian runners of Mexico, who offer instances of wonderful
endurance, and eat nothing but tortillas of maize, which they eat as
they run along; the street porters of Algiers, Smyrna, Constantinople
and Egypt, well known for their uncommon strength, and living on nothing
but maize, rice, dates, melons, beans, and lentils. The Piedmontese
workmen, thanks to whom the tunnelling of the Alps is due, feed on
polenta, (maize-broth). The peasants of the Asturias, like those of the
Auvergne, scarcely eat anything except chick-peas and chestnuts ...
statistics prove ... that the most numerous population of the globe is
vegetarian.'

The following miscellaneous excerpta are from Smith's _Fruits and
Farinacea_:--

'The peasantry of Norway, Sweden, Russia, Denmark, Poland, Germany,
Turkey, Greece, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, and of almost every
country in Europe subsist principally, and most of them entirely, on
vegetable food.... The Persians, Hindoos, Burmese, Chinese, Japanese,
the inhabitants of the East Indian Archipelago, and of the mountains of
the Himalaya, and, in fact, most of the Asiatics, live upon vegetable
productions.'

'The people of Russia, generally, subsist on coarse black rye-bread and
garlics. I have often hired men to labour for me. They would come on
board in the morning with a piece of black bread weighing about a pound,
and a bunch of garlics as big as one's fist. This was all their
nourishment for the day of sixteen or eighteen hours' labour. They were
astonishingly powerful and active, and endured severe and protracted
labour far beyond any of my men. Some of these Russians were eighty and
even ninety years old, and yet these old men would do more work than any
of the middle-aged men belonging to my ship. Captain C. S. Howland of
New Bedford, Mass.'

'The Chinese feed almost entirely on rice, confections and fruits; those
who are enabled to live well and spend a temperate life, are possessed
of great strength and agility.'

'The Egyptian cultivators of the soil, who live on coarse wheaten bread,
Ind