uld ever buy meat until they have bought three quarts of milk.
The insistence by scientific men upon the prime importance of milk has
probably had something to do with its rapid enhancement in price. This
latter factor is greatly to be regretted. I have often wondered why it
was that a quart bottle of a fancy brand of milk in New York should cost
about as much as a quart of _vin ordinaire_ on the streets of Paris, and
a quart bottle of cream as much as a quart of good champagne in Paris.
Despite much denial it appears to me that milk is not sold as cheaply as
it ought to be. Everything should be done to conserve our herds of cows
for the increased supply of whole milk and incidentally for the
manufacture of cheese and of milk powder or of condensed milk.

If one takes milk with other foods, meat may be dispensed with. Thus
Hindhede advocates as ideal a diet consisting of bread, potatoes, fruit,
and a pint of milk. Splendid health, both of body and mind, the
peasants' comparative immunity to indigestion, kidney and liver disease,
as well as an absolute immunity to gout, is the alluring prospect held
out by the following dietary:

Graham bread 1 pound
Potatoes 2 pounds
Vegetable fat 1/2 pound
Apples 1-1/2 pounds
Milk 1 pint

This bread-potato-fruit diet gives a very excellent basis of wholesome
nutrition. The potatoes yield an alkaline ash which has a highly solvent
power over uric acid, and, therefore, a good supply of these valuable
tubers is needed by the nation.

To most Americans the dietary factors here described will appear to be
merely attenuated hypotheses, fit only for philosophic contemplation.
For, in real life, it is the roast beef of Old England, or some other
famed equivalent, that makes its appeal. Far be it from me to disparage
the feast following a hunt of the wild boar or other feasts famed in
song and story, but that is not the question. The question is, is meat
necessary? The description of the Italian dietary answers this in the
negative.

But is meat desirable? The Italian experimenters believed that the
addition of four or eight ounces of meat to the dietaries of some of
their subjects increased their physical and also their mental powers.
The increase in mental power due to change in diet has always seemed to
me to be a figment of the imagination and not susceptible of
demonstration. Thomas lived for twenty-four days on a diet of star