rior to every other. He has
repeatedly told me of an experiment he made, of three months, on mere
bread and water. Never, says he, was I more vigorous in body and mind,
than at the end of this experiment. But the reader well knows that I am
not an advocate of a diet of mere bread and water. I regard fruits, or
fruit juices--unfermented--almost as necessary, to adults, as bread.

PROF. C. U. SHEPARD.

The reputation of this gentleman, in the scientific world, is so well
known, that no apology can be necessary for inserting his testimony. As
a chemist, he is second to very few, if any, men in this country. The
following are his remarks:

"Start not back at the idea of subsisting upon the potato alone, ye who
think it necessary to load your tables with all the dainty viands of the
market--with fish, flesh, and fowl, seasoned with oil and spices, and
eaten, perhaps, with wines;--start not back, I say, with disgust, until
you are able to display in your own pampered persons a firmer muscle, a
more beau-ideal outline, and a healthier red than the potato-fed
peasantry of Ireland and Scotland once showed you, as you passed by
their cabin doors!

"No; the chemical physiologist will tell you that the well ripened
potato, when properly cooked, contains every element that man requires
for nutrition; and in the best proportion in which they are found in any
plant whatever. There is the abounding supply of starch for enabling him
to maintain the process of breathing, and for generating the necessary
warmth of body; there is the nitrogen for contributing to the growth and
renovation of organs; the lime and phosphorus for the bones; and all the
salts which a healthy circulation demands. In fine, the potato may well
be called the universal plant."

BLACKWOOD, IN HIS MAGAZINE.

"Chemistry," says Blackwood's Magazine, "has already told us many
remarkable things in regard to the vegetable food we eat--that it
contains, for example, a certain per centage of the actual fat and lean
we consume in our beef, or mutton, or pork--and, therefore, that he who
lives on vegetable food may be as strong as the man who lives on animal
food, because both in reality feed on the same things, in a somewhat
different form."

There is this difference, however, that in the one case--that is, in the
use of the vegetables which contain the elements referred to--we save
the trouble of running it through the body of the living animal, and
losing seven