agriculture and the multiplication of the
human species. The cultivation of our crops has ultimately no other
object than the production of a maximum of those substances which
are adapted for assimilation and respiration, in the smallest
possible space. Grain and other nutritious vegetables yield us, not
only in starch, sugar, and gum, the carbon which protects our organs
from the action of oxygen, and produces in the organism the heat
which is essential to life, but also in the form of vegetable
fibrine, albumen, and caseine, our blood, from which the other parts
of our body are developed.

Man, when confined to animal food, respires, like the carnivora, at
the expense of the matters produced by the metamorphosis of
organised tissues; and, just as the lion, tiger, hyaena, in the
cages of a menagerie, are compelled to accelerate the waste of the
organised tissues by incessant motion, in order to furnish the
matter necessary for respiration, so, the savage, for the very same
object, is forced to make the most laborious exertions, and go
through a vast amount of muscular exercise. He is compelled to
consume force merely in order to supply matter for respiration.

Cultivation is the economy of force. Science teaches us the simplest
means of obtaining the greatest effect with the smallest expenditure
of power, and with given means to produce a maximum of force. The
unprofitable exertion of power, the waste of force in agriculture,
in other branches of industry, in science, or in social economy, is
characteristic of the savage state, or of the want of knowledge.

In accordance with what I have already stated, you will perceive
that the substances of which the food of man is composed may be
divided into two classes; into nitrogenised and non-nitrogenised.
The former are capable of conversion into blood; the latter are
incapable of this transformation.

Out of those substances which are adapted to the formation of blood,
are formed all the organised tissues. The other class of substances,
in the normal state of health, serve to support the process of
respiration. The former may be called the plastic elements of
nutrition; the latter, elements of respiration.

Among the former we reckon--

Vegetable fibrine.
Vegetable albumen.
Vegetable caseine.
Animal flesh.
Animal blood.

Among the elements of respiration in our food, are--

Fat. Pectine.
Starch. Bassorine.
Gum. Wine.
Cane sugar. Beer.
Gra