L STATISTICS. Numbers of Live Stock in the United
Kingdom. Value of the Agriculture Products of Great Britain.

254

THE CHEMISTRY OF FOOD.

INTRODUCTION.

When Virgil composed his immortal "Bucolics," and Varro indited his
profound Essays on Agriculture, the inhabitants of the British Islands
were almost completely ignorant of the art of cultivating the soil.
The rude spoils torn from the carcasses of savage animals protected the
bodies of their hardly less savage victors; and the produce of the chase
served almost exclusively to nourish the hardy frames of the ancient
Celtic hunters. In early ages wild beasts abounded in the numerous and
extensive forests of Britain and Ireland; but men were few, for the
conditions under which the maintenance of a dense population is possible
did not then exist. As civilisation progressed, men rapidly multiplied,
and the demand for food increased. The pursuit of game became merely the
pastime of the rich; and tame sheep and oxen furnished meat to the lowly
as well as to the great. Nor were the fruits of the earth neglected; for
during the latter days of the dominion of the Romans, England raised
large quantities of corn. Gradually the food of the people, which at
first was almost purely animal, became chiefly vegetable. The shepherds,
who had supplanted the hunters, became less numerous than the tillers of
land; and the era of tillage husbandry began.

At present the great mass of the rural population of these countries
subsist almost exclusively upon vegetable aliment--a diet which poverty,
and not inclination, prescribes for them. Were the flesh of animals
the staple food of the British peasantry, their numbers would not be
nearly so large as they now are, for a given area of land is capable of
sustaining a far larger number of vegetarians than of meat eaters. The
Chinese are by no means averse to animal food, but they are so numerous,
that they are in general obliged to content themselves on a purely
vegetable diet.

In the manufacturing districts of Great Britain, there are several
millions of people whose condition in relation to food is somewhat
different from that of the small farmer and agricultural laborer. The
artizans employed in our great industries are comparatively well paid
for their toil; and the results of their labor place within their reach
a fair share of animal food. This