tion of animal food, which by imparting strength and fierceness, to unite with the sensibility inspired by the climate, may produce that ferocious, daring, implacable, and bloody disposition for which they are so remarkable, and which runs through their system both of laws and government.

The people of Mexico, who used animal food in a large proportion, and part of it raw, and dwelt at the same time in a hot climate, were of a disposition similar to that of the Japanese, being bold, cruel, and revengeful, as appears by the resistance they made to the Spaniards, and the barbarous manner in which they treated their prisoners, and their human sacrifices. It also argues a disposition extremely savage, in a people who had attained a considerable degree of civilization, to eat the flesh of their fellow-creatures, as they are reported to have done.-Robertson's America, vol. ii, p. 310. 4to. edit

Vegetable diet appears to have imparted a great degree of mildness to religion, and from the same cause. We do not find among such a people any instances of cruelty in religion; of human sacrifices, or of gods delighting in blood, or in the destruction of mankind. It is probable, that the religious tolera. tion which prevails through the Indies, is owing to the same cause. That people although passionately attached to their own religious sect or persuasion, allow still, that future happiness is not confined to their own followers. The people of Siam never dispute about religion. [Forbin's Memoirs.] At Calicut, it is a maxim of state, that every religion is good. [Pirard's Travels, chap. xxvii.] Compare these tenets with those of the Japanese, and even the Mahommedans."-Falconer on Climate, &c. b. v. ch. i. sec. ii. The same writer attributes the cruelties practis

ed on animals, to the selfish effects of luxury and false refinement. "Luxury," he says, " increases the sen. sibility of the passions. Luxury is always accompanied by indolence, and is unfavourable to health. and renders the body less robust and strong. The custom of giving scope to our desires on every occasion, which is essential to luxury, is apt both to multiply our wishes and our uneasiness at our inability to gratify them. Thus we see children, who are accustomed to be indulged on every occasion, have their wishes thereby much enlarged, and are apt to break out into violent sallies of anger, when the object of their desires cannot be procured to their expectations. The same temper is equally perceivable at a more advanced period of life. This kind of sensibility is mere. ly selfish, and bears little respect to the welfare or feelings of others, or to common humanity. The cruelties practised in the most deliberate and protracted manner, on some brute animals, the devoted victims of luxurious indulgence, evince this position very strongly, even in the present age. And in former times the connection of luxury with cruelty, even toward the human species, appears to have been very remarkable.

Athenæus notices the cruelties of the people of Mi. letus, and of some of the Scythian nations, which he tells us, was ascribed by the philosophers of antiquity to their luxury. [Athenæi, p. 524, 525.] The same quality, he observed, prevailed among the Ionians, which he derives from the same cause. [p. 625.] The Roman Emperors Vitellius and Elagabalus, while they betrayed the most abject submission to their appetites, astonished the world at the same time with their muliplied inhumanities. Tacitus connects luxury and cruelty together, in the same manner, in

the character of Otho. [Taciti Hist. lib. ii. cap 31.] The same kind of insensibility pervaded the public, as well as private mind. Athenæus tells us that at the period of the battle of Charonea, and the important but melancholy consequences to the liberty of Greece that attended it, a number of the Athenian citizens, of some rank and distinction, were found so totally insensible to the interests, dangers, and distresses of the country, that they formed themselves into a convivial society, called the Sixty, and employed their time in feasting, drinking, gaming, and in the sprightly and satirical exercises of wit and pleasantry. No public affairs whatever, were considered by them as of consequence sufficient to interrupt their mirth, or disturb their tranquillity. They saw their countrymen arming for battle, and heard of their captivity and death with the utmost indifference. E vents and actions of the most serious kind were treated by them with wantonness and levity. [Athenæi, p. 614.]" On the Influence of Climate, book VI. ch. vi. sec. 1.

Experience has shewn that whoever abstains, for a long time from wine, and seasoned flesh, will acquire an exquisite delicacy and distinguishing sense of taste; the nervous papile of the tongue and palate being less oppressed, and their actions left more undisturbed, than by the redundant quantity of the small pungent particles with which flesh, and spicy, hard, and oily bodies so much abound.

A dog fed on raw flesh is much more fierce and ra. pacious than one which eats that kind of food dressed. From this cause proceeds the great ferocity of but. cher's dogs. Wolves, lions, tygers, &c. probably owe their superior fierceness, in a great measure, to their food, which is always raw, killed in the blood

age animals are peculiarly greedy of blood, and, where that is to be had in plenty, never regard the solid part of their prey. The weasel and polecat will kill a great number of fowls at one time, to suck their blood only; and the same is true of the fox. Mankind are, in like manner, affected by eating raw

flesh.

Pomponius Mela mentions it as a custom of the Scythians, to suck the blood of their enemies killed in battle.-lib. ii, cap. 1. Ammianus Marcelli. nus gives the same account of the Saracens, lib. xxxi. cap. 16. And Mr. Carver, of some of the American Indians."-Falconer on Climate, b. v. ch. i. sec. 1.

It is a remarkable fact, that at Heimaey, the only Westmann island which is inhabited, scarcely a single instance has been known during the last twenty years, of a child surviving the period of infancy. In consequence, the population, which does not exceed two hundred people, is entirely kept up by emigration from the main land of Iceland. The food of these people consists principally of sea-birds, fulmers and puffins; i. e. Procellaria glacialis, and Alce arctica of Linnæus. The fulmers they procure in vast abundance, and they use the eggs and flesh of the birds; and salt the latter for their winter food. There are a few cows and sheep upon the island, but the inhabitants are said to have no vegetable food.-Dr. Lambe's Addit. Reports, 197.

The difference of the flavour of bacon, when the hog has been allowed to eat any thing, and when carefully reared on vegetables, is generally known. Indeed pork has been so grossly fed as to occasion sickness in the stomach, and violent effects in the bowels. See the description which Boccacio has given of the disgusting excesses of this animal on dead bodies, during the plague at Florence.

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At the tower of London, experience has taught those who have the care of the managerie, that feeding monkies on flesh renders them gross and shortens their lives.

"The effects of animal diet are also evidently adverse to the exertions of genius, sentiment, and the more delicate feelings; and also to deep mental researches. This may be accounted for from the pletho. ra and distension of the vessels, which is induced by animal diet, and the load which it lays on the digestive organs and powers of the body, indicated by the indolence, dullness and yawning, which a full meal of animal food almost always brings on. [To eat a large quantity of food, and that of the animal kind, destroys the powers of reason and of reflection, and renders the powers of the understanding more slow and heavy. Theophrast. Philos. lib. 5.] Dogs of the chace that feed much on animal food, raw flesh particularly, lose their accuracy of scent. Perhaps this may be a cause why beasts of prey, in general, have no scent of the animals they pursue."-Idem. b. v. ch. i. sec. 1.

"The natives of the continent of India, according to all accounts, both ancient and modern, have always been mild, tender, and compassionate. But their neighbours, the inhabitants of the islands, are by no means of this description; and the Japanese, who live in the same latitude with a great part of the Indies, are of a cruel, obstinate, and perverse temper. This difference is probably owing to a difference of diet: a conjecture rendered most probable from the analogy of the effects of vegetable food on brute animals. [Diodor. Sicul. lib. ii.-Strabo, lib. xv.— Bernier. tom. ii. p. 140.] Even the fiercest of these, lions, for instance, have had their ferocity greatly a