Anatomical peculiarities of the vegetable feeders.

For it is a significant and important physiological fact, that the digestive apparatus of an animal must correspond to the extent of change which its food has to undergo in order to convert it into the flesh which constitutes the animal consuming it.

Thus if grass, which is very low in the scale of vegetable growths, has to be converted into the highly composite animal fibre constituting beef and mutton, a long and complicated apparatus is required. It consists of four stomachs, from the first of which after eating, the food is returned into the mouth during the act of "chewing the cud," after which it is transmitted in turn through the other three, a process which confers the characteristic distinction of "ruminant" upon the animals referred to. No human stomach under any circumstances has the power of effecting the changes in question.

The carnivore, living exclusively on flesh, requires for his purpose nothing more than the digestion and assimilation of animal tissues identical with those already composing his own body. This process, compared with that above described, is a very simple one; and accordingly the stomach and digestive organs are far less complex in structure.

Man holds a position between the two extremes, with his varied surroundings and his ability to select and adapt; for he possesses the power to support life by consuming the best products of the vegetable kingdom, and also all animal foods, suitable to his purpose and tastes. The animal fibres of fishes, birds, and tender meat, with the concentrated extracts of the latter, being identical in nature and form with the structures of his own body, are assimilated with greater ease than the nitrogenous products of the vegetable kingdom. His digestive apparatus is more highly developed than that of the carnivore, but more closely resembles it than the complicated apparatus of the exclusively vegetable feeder.

Man is therefore manifestly adapted for a mixed diet from the animal and vegetable kingdom, and must be regarded beyond all controversy as an omnivorous animal.

In respect of teeth, stomach, and intestine, the human type closely corresponds with that which predominates among the various species of monkey, the caecum being rather larger in monkeys than it is in man. Monkeys are often spoken of as living exclusively on vegetable diet, but this is very far from the truth. Moreover, the four genera of anthropoid apes which more nearly approach man than any other, viz. the gibbons, the orang-outang, gorilla, and chimpanzee, in a state of nature obtain their sustenance from both animal and vegetable sources.*

* See "Anthropoid Apes," by Robert Hartmann, Prof. Univ.