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foods),^[1] so that the stomach need never be cloyed. I drink no wine, nor any fermented liquors, and am rarely dry, most of my food being liquid, moist, or juicy; only, after dinner, I drink either coffee or green tea, but seldom both in the same day, and sometimes a glass of soft small cider. The thinner my diet is, the easier, more cheerful and lightsome, I find myself; my sleep is also the sounder, though perhaps somewhat shorter than formerly under my full animal diet. But, then, I am more alive than ever I was, as soon as I awake and get up. I rise commonly at six, and go to bed at ten. The order I find in this diet, from much experience, is, that milk is the lightest and best of all foods, being a medium between animal substances and vegetables; dressed vegetables, less windy and griping than raw; ripe fruit than unripe; the mealy roots more than the fibrous; and the dry than the crude vegetables. I find much butter, cream, fat and oily vegetables, and especially nuts, both hard of digestion, stuffing, and inflating. When I am dry (which is rarely), I drink Bath, Bristol, or Pyrmont water.

Many Vegetarians bear witness that abstinence from flesh, fish, and fowl restored them to health long unknown; they have not found it necessary to renounce milk and eggs for physical regeneration. Read the case of Mr. Collyns. One remark before leaving the dairy. Many of our critics forget that herbivorous and frugivorous, not less than carnivorous animals, suck the breast. No sane man ever denied that milk is a natural human food, at least for babes.

Sir Henry Thompson complains of our narrowness (Nineteenth Century, May, 1885, p. 778):

I have no sympathy with any dietary system which excludes the present generally recognised sources and varieties of food.

A catholic dispensation this for purveyors of polonies, pâtés de foie gras,^[2] rotten (or "high") game, raw sausages with their attendant trichinosis, oleomargarine and butterine, and the latest delicacy, Schnepfendreck.^[3] From all these delights of the carnivorous the Vegetarian is debarred by his principles; from their deserved punishment he is free.

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1. Here Cheyne draws the distinction—for which Vegetarians are taken to task by Sir Henry Thompson—between milk and its products and animal foods.
2. Elsewhere (p. 783) Sir Henry Thompson holds up the Strassburg geese as awful examples of liver derangement; but as human food "foie gras offers an irrestistible charm to the gourmet at most well-furnished tables"
3. Listen to Pierer’s Conversations-Lexikon (6th ed. Oberhausen and Leipzig, 1879. xvi 103): "Die Schnepfen gelten für das feinschmeckendste Wildpret; im Herbste sind sie sehr fett, doch im Frühling schmecken sie besser. Ihr Darmkanal ist häufig mit Bandwürmern dicht angefüllt, welche als besondere Leckerbissen gelten. Das Gescheide der Schnepfen wird haüfig ausgezogen, die fette Feuchtigkeit, welche beim Braten der Schnepfen aus dem Mastdarm tritt, wird mit gerösteten Semmelschnitten aufgesaugt und als Schnepfendreck für eine Delicatesse gehalten."Dove's dung was sold for food in Israel (2 Kings vi 25), but it was in the extremity of famine.