DISTRIBUTION OF FOOD.

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ing a highly carboniferous oil, suited to keep up the internal warmth, and animals covered with furs, which resist the cold. In the temperate zones, those which furnish suet, or fat, and butter, a semi-animal oil; and wool, which produces warmth without preventing exercise, abounds. Further south, the olive furnishes a vegetable oil, and cotton affords a covering, which protects from the sun's rays without producing much heat. The indigenous trees also show their adaptability to man's use; pines, which are easily split and burn well, are found in the colder climes. The warmer regions, abound in hard closegrained wood, difficult to cleave, and unfit for fuel. How wonderful are the works of God! what wisdom characterises them !

Animal fat, or oil, is produced by a vegetable diet, either marine or terrene. Carnivorous animals are not usually fat. In the warm countries, the herbage of which is quickly burnt up by the sun, animals do not fatten to the same extent, as in the colder climes, where the pastures are greener, and succulent vegetables more abundant. The reason is obvious; man does not require fat, to keep up the heat of his body, nature does not therefore afford the nutriment, nor do the animals deposit it. These considerations must be borne in mind when we come to contrast the production of food in different countries.

The vital functions of the human frame, are kept up by motion, which is promoted by the consumption of food. The beating of the heart, the action of the lungs, require a supply of the fuel to keep them in motion, just as much as the steam-engine. Food, therefore, may be divided into two parts-that which causes motion, and that which produces heat; or, to

use the descriptive language of Professor Playfair, flesh-formers and heat-givers. The former is necessary in all climes; the latter is more necessary in some than in others.

be

The entire physical economy of the world may condensed into one word, motion, or its synonym, life. The motion of plants, is shown by their drawing nutriment from the earth, depositing it in leaves, tubers, or fruit, suited for the use of animals or man. The atoms thus taken from the crust of the planet, are assimilated by man's digestive organs, and fulfil their proper functions. But it is necessary, in order that the ground should furnish a continuous supply of food, to restore to it, those ingredients which have been abstracted by the roots of the plants; where this restoration does not take place, land becomes sterile. This restoration may be rendered inconvenient, if not impossible, by artificial causes, such as the consumption of food in places, distant from that where it was raised.

In the

The capacity of land to support human life, has never been tested to the full extent. We are not authorised by experience, to put limits upon the extent of population, which land can maintain, when it is managed according to those laws of chemical affinity, which govern our physical economy. Land in its natural state, produces but little food. tropics, it affords a supply of fruits, in all regions, food for those animals, which man kills and eats. Cereals do not grow wild, they require labour. Man's original mission was to dress the soil;' he found in that work, the reward of his toil, it gave zest to his enjoyment. The application of labour to land produces food. The restoration to the land of the

COMPONENT PARTS OF FOOD.

225

ingredients taken from the soil in food, restores it to its fecund state. It would appear impossible, if the produce be consumed where it is raised, to overpopulate a district. Malthus, enunciated the idea, that population would be limited by food; he dreaded the increase of the human race. Since he wrote, the population of Europe has increased fifty per cent., yet food is more abundant than it was. I hold the converse of his proposition, and say, "The quantity of food, is limited by the labour applied to its production; the condition necessary to the production of food, is the application of labour to the land.'

The quality of food necessary for man's sustenance, depends upon climate, the quantity required for his consumption, upon his employment. The former varies as to the proportion of heat-givers, the latter as to the quantity of flesh-formers. Dr. Playfair furnishes a table of the composition of food in 100 parts,* from which I extract the following in formation. I exclude the mineral contents::

'An adult man,' says the same author, 'takes from thirty to forty ounces of solid food daily, or in the course of the year, about seven times the weight of his body, yet that remains the same weight at the end of the year, as it was at the beginning. We are of opinion, that two ounces of flesh-formers per day, may keep a man alive when at rest, but that three and a half ounces are required to preserve his health with moderate exercise; while six ounces are requisite for a hard day's work. The difference between the two last numbers gives us two and ahalf ennes as the quantity of desh-formers necessary for hand productive ben Hard 1abour in

prisons & defied to be, tu which quickens the pals and opens the pores which may be pro daved by the versumption of food.

These box feet brate as sn He: the dousanigtion of food without exercise, prodateS ATqu'once in man, he in exam and is Eance the bove are prepared ir maša 17 legrining them nos, via essers the ensangton of food by moon, and terases de ferest of de THE TREDI Becce a mois, Trike suù ratus legents moz The sites of mens casumaidie ʼn uses riê

ALIMENTARY AND STIPENDIARY CLASSES.

227

person requires, on an average, a quarter of corn annually to support life and afford labour.

Dr. Playfair estimates the annual consumption of flesh-formers for each man, woman, and child,at sixtytwo pounds. He states the proportion in grain as follows:

Average, 424 lbs. per quarter, containing 50 lbs. flesh-formers.

Wheat, the principal article consumed, contains 72 pounds of flesh-formers per quarter of 480 pounds. Oats, though nearly as nutritious, are mostly given to horses. Barley, which has less nutriment, is used for making beer and spirits.

M. Turgot, the father of political economy, whose work on 'The Production of Wealth' formed the text for Adam Smith's treatise upon 'The Wealth of Nations,' divided mankind into two classes, the alimentary and the stipendiary; he placed the husbandman, or agriculturist, in the former class, as he is the producer, not only of food for man, but also of the fibrous substances which form his clothing. He says truly, that all the other classes depend upon the husbandman, and calls them stipendiary, as they are supported out of his labour. These ideas have long governed the policy of the most populous nation of the world, the Chinese, who, according to Sir George Staunton, had enrolled among their maxims, one which stated, that the husbandman and the grower of mulberry trees-those who furnished