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any other calamity, they brought their sheep and goats into a place appointed, and separating the young ones from their dams, raised a general bleating among them, which they imagined would appease the wrath of the Supreme Power, and incline him to send them what they wanted. [Astley's Voyages, vol. i, p. 549.] To a God of love, how much more acceptable the prayers of the humane Guanchos, mingled with the plaintive cries of their guileless mediators? how much more moving their innocent supplication, than the ruffian petitions of those execrable Arabs, who, imploring mercy, perpetrated murder, and embrued in the blood of agonizing innocence, dared to beseech thy compassion, thou common Father of all that breathe the breath of life!

The Otaheiteans, says Bougainville, subsist prin. cipally on vegetables and fish. They seldom eat flesh; their children and young women, never any; and this, he says, doubtless keeps them free from almost all our diseases. [Voyage by Forster, p. 248.] This is the case in the other South-sea islands, see Sparman's Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, ii, 228, &c.

We learn from Ulloa's work on South America, that the instances are common on that continent, of persons in good health at a hundred years of age; and not rare, at a hundred and thirty or forty; who are sustained entirely on vegetables.

Tho' the Indian women rear fowls, and other domestic animals in their cottages, they never eat them. They will not sell, much less kill them; so that if a stranger, who was compelled to pass the night in one of their cottages, offers ever so much money for a fowl, they refuse to part with it.-Pinkerton's Col. part lviii, p. 519.

In the East Indies, the Pegu clergy teach, that

charity is the most sublime virtue, and therefore ought to be extensive enough to reach, not only to the human species, but even to animals; wherefore they neither kill nor eat any; and they are so ben. evolent to mankind, that they cherish all alike, making no exception on account of religion.-Capt. Hamilton, in Pinkerton's Col. pa. xxxiii, p. 426.

In Cambia, the indians will kill nothing, nor have any thing killed; they consequently eat no flesh, but live ou roots, rice, fruits and milk.-Fitch, in Pinkerton's Col. v. ix, p. 408.

India, of all the regions of the earth, is the only public theatre of justice and tenderness to brutes, and all living creaturcs; for there, not confining murder to the killing of man, they religiously abstain from taking the life of the meanest animal.--Oving. ton's Voyage to Surat, 296.

Even the Hottentots or inhabitants of the Cape, tho' they have cows, hogs, and sheep, seldom eat any of them, living chiefly on milk, butter, and vegeta. bles. They have a root which serves them for bread. [Voyage to Siam, 5.] The slaves and boshies-men, who serve the farmers, are kept almost entirely with bread and other preparations of meal and flour.-Sparrman's Voyage, ii, 231.

In the island of Johanna the natives live in a great measure on rice and the cocoa-nut put together.→ Voyage to Surat, 121.

The South-sea islanders were handsome and health y as can be imagined. They lived on fruits and vegetables, till Capt. Cooke conceived that they must be miserable without beef and mutton. He took com. passion on them by perverting their natures. They have since lost their former health.-Newton, p. 36.. Those who have travelled in Spain are not unac

quainted that a native attendant will accompany a mule or carriage on foot, forty or fifty miles a day, without any support besides raw onions and bread.

The peasantry of that part of Spain through which Swinburne travelled, seemed poor, and frugal in their diet, bread steeped in oil, he says, and occasionally seasoned with vinegar, is the common food of the country people, from Barcelona to Malaga.-Trav els, in 1776, p. 210.

The Dumplers are a plain and peaceable sect of Germans in Pensylvania. Their common food consists of vegetables, because they think it is more conformable to the spirit of Christianity, which has an aversion to blood.-Raynal, vii, 296.

The Irish, who live chiefly on potatoes and butter-milk, are as strong as any race of man in Europe. They are not remarked as long livers, which may be accounted for, from their propensity to drink whiskey, and take common water.

Dr. Adam Smith has asserted, that Ireland has supplied the metropolis with a race of the finest women and the stoutest men, which are known in the world. The children of the Irish are mostly fed on butter-milk and potatoes. In Lancashire, a county famed for beauty, the same diet is much in use. A judicious observer told me, that the finest family of children he had ever seen, was that of a very eminent surgeon of Liverpool, and that this family adhered strictly to a vegetable diet.

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The wild girl who was caught in Champaigne climbed trees like a squirrel, and leapt from one branch to another on all four. She became, soon after she was caught, incapable of those exertions of agility; an alteration which she attributed to the gross aliment they had given her, which, she said, had made

her so much heavier than when she lived on wild food. -Monboddo.

IN INDIVIDUALS.

What is more agreeable than to contemplate particular instances of longevity, attained by uniformity of temperance, moderation of desire, and simplicity of life! What more pleasing than to review their examples and examine their precepts!

Instances of the greatest age are to be found among men who from their youth lived principally on vegetables and who perhaps never tasted flesh. The most ancient are the Stoics and the Pythagoreans, according to whose ideas subduing the passions and ob serving strict regimen, were the most essential duties of a philosopher.

Clement of Alexandria, says of Saint Matthew, that he abstained from eating flesh, and that his diet was fruit, roots and herbs.-Pædagogue, b. ii, c. 1:

Descartes, in conformity to the humane principles of Plutarch, always preferred fruits and vegetables to the bleeding flesh of animals.-Seward's Anecdotes, ii, 171.

Pythagoras was a man of universal knowledge, who flourished about 500 years before Christ, who forbad to kill, much more to eat, living creatures, that had the same prerogative of souls with ourselves, and ate nothing that had had life.-Lucian, Auction of Philosophers. He divided the life of man into four equal parts. From the first to the twentieth year he called him a child, a man begun; from the twentieth to the fortieth, a young man; from the fortieth to the sixtieth, a man; from the sixtieth to the eightieth, an old, or declining man; and after that period he reckoned him no more among the living,

to whatever age he might survive. The Pythagorean diet consisted in the free and universal use of every thing that is vegetable, tender and fresh, required little or no preparation to make them fit to eat, such as roots, leaves, flowers, fruits, and seeds; and in a general abstinence from every thing animal, whether fresh or dryed, bird, beast, or fish. Milk and honey made up part of this diet. Eggs were exclud. ed. Their drink was the purest water; but neither wine nor any vinous liquor. Pythagoras's two meals a day, were for the most part of bread only; but his last meal, which we should call a supper, was abundant. It appears that his regimen was not so strict as that of some of his disciples, for he drank wine, not only in the day time, but at evening in com. pany at table. He made it an article in his religion,. that his clothes should be white and extremely clean, and be changed every day. [Diod. Sicu. &c.] He preferred those made of vegetables to those made of animal substances, which he knew attracted moist and unwholesome effluvia. [Apul. Apol. p. 64, and Prisc. Jambl. c. 21.-Philostr. Vit. Ap. viii, 3.] He took a great delight in music, and bathed frequently [Jambl. 29] He bought animals and particularly fish, which, after he had examined, he set at liberty or returned them into the water, and was particularly careful not to injure fruit-bearing trees. -Plutarch and Apuleius. Liv. xl. 29. Plin. xiii, 15. Isocrates, a man of great temperance and modesty, lived 98 years.

Democritus, the friend and searcher of nature, a man also of a good temper and serene mind, lived 109 years; and the frugal but slovenly Diogenes,

96.

Xenophilus, a Pythagorean, also lived 106 years.

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