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what principles things might be resolved and of what they were composed."* Dr. Shaw is, if possible, still more emphatic in his admiration. "Here," he says, "was a noble soul; a true philosophical mind, well seasoned with humanity, beneficence, and goodness. After he had led us through all the regions of nature, considered her various productions, showed us their uses and the manner of converting them to our several purposes, convinced us that we live in a world most wisely contrived wherein numberless good designs are at once carried on with unceasing variety and manifested that all the beings and all the bodies we know jointly conspire, as one whole, in bringing about the great ends of nature."* Without further testimony this, we think, ought to satisfy even those unacquainted with the works of Boyle, that no philosopher who has written in the English language has stronger claims on the gratitude of all who value the natural sciences for the service they render mankind. Locke is the only one who can be compared to him in the unsullied lustre of his character. Assuming the author of the Novum Organum to have been innocent of the worst charge preferred against him, yet even his own biographers place Boyle above him in the moral scale; nor do they deny that the philosopher of Lismore has, upon the whole, done quite as much good for mankind as the great Chancellor. The discoveries of Newton are, indeed, grander and more striking than those of Boyle; but are they more useful? have they contributed more to human comfort or to the development of the human mind? If some maintain the affirmative, even these will hardly claim that the philosopher who wrote an elaborate work to prove that the Pope was Antichrist, who put himself to much expense and trouble, and exercised all the influence he possessed in order to prevent a scientific and learned man from receiving an academic degree for no better reason than that his religion differed from his own and from that of his friends-was so wise or philosophical a man, after all, so good a moralist, or so good a statesman, not to mention his religion, as the philosopher who loved no one the less for differing with him in opinion, who regarded religious intolerance as the worst kind of oppression, because its object is to shackle the mind, and who accordingly protested against it with his last breath.

* Preface to Dr. Shaw's Abridgment of Boyle's Philosophical Works. London, 1738.

None set a higher value on the discoveries of Newton than we; none more highly admire his many excellent qualities; we have devoted as much labor and research to the works of Bacon as perhaps any other periodical writer of the present day, so that none whom we could influence should fail to profit by their teachings. There are many other philosophers, ancient and modern, with whom we have taken similar pains; but Boyle is the most admirable character we have met with in the whole range of philosophy, science, and literature; and if instead of being born in Ireland he had been a Hindoo, a Laplander, or an African, we would have sought to do him equal justice, and to prove that wherever his ancestors were born, whether they were persons who threw down mass-houses or "transplanted multitudes of barbarous septs" from their own soil into "the wilds and deserts," he was not a degenerate son, but far nobler than any of his ancestors-vastly superior to any "great Earl" that ever oppressed a generous people.

ART. IV-Food and its Adulterations, composing the Reports of the Analytic Sanitary Commission of the "Lancet" in the years 1851 to 1854, inclusive. By ARTHUR HILL HASSAL, M.D., Chief Analyst of the Commission. London, 1855.

2. Physiologie du gout; ou Meditations de Gastronomie Transcendante: Ouvrage Chedrique, Histrique et à l'ordre du jour. Par M. BRILLAT SAVARIN, Membre de plusieurs Societés Savantes. Paris, 1835.

3. Physiological Chemistry. By Professor C. G. LEHMANN. Philadelphia, 1866.

4. Des Falsifications des Substances alimentaires et des Moyens Chimiques de les reconnaitre. Par JULES GARNIER ET CH. HAREL. Paris.

THOUGH psychologists vary in determining the exact line of demarcation which separates instinct from reason, yet the main differences are so easy to grasp that, practically, no difficulty is experienced in assigning the actions of animals to the operation of the one or the other cause. Thus we set down as the result of instinct the architectural industry of the beaver, for the reason that it exhibits none of the vagueness and fluctuations which mark the progressive tendencies of reason. But, perhaps, in no respect do the essential differences between these faculties appear so strongly as in the selection of those articles of food which nature designed for the sustenance of the various animal tribes.

The brute creation display an unerring accuracy in this choice, not only by the avoidance of articles of a positively noxious sort, but in choosing substances which admit of the speediest assimilation with the tissues of the body. We all know that the herbivora, whose alimentary canal is adapted to slow and elaborate digestion, confine themselves to an herbal dietary, and even this with certain differences according as physiology has proved the suitableness of grass, hay, rice, &c., to the organic and structural condition of the animal. This provision was indeed indispensable, since nothing but an innate discernment could guide unreasoning creatures in the selection of proper food. With man, reason and experience take the place of instinct; nor can we determine the influence an imperfect system of dietetics has exercised in past times over human health and longevity till enlightened experience and sound science demonstrate the entire suitableness of some regime to the wants and conditions of the human frame.

We know that the various nations which people the earth exhibit the greatest possible diversity in the quality and preparation of their food; that the Esquimaux lap train oil, and swallow putrid blubber with as much gusto as the veriest gourmand who gorges truffes or patés de foie gras; that the Muscovites delight in the stale renderings of lard, nor found in the metropolis of France, when they entered as conquerors, anything more seductively appetising than tallow candles! We know that the Chinese luxuriates in quiet enjoyment over his dainty quarter of rat or dog pot-pie, or birds-nest soup; while the spiritual Frenchman has earned from the gross beef-eaters of "Merrie England" the contemptuous appellation of Johnny Crapaud because of his pardonable weakness for frog fricassee. The keen relish with which the Teuton gloats over the penetrating flavor of perfumed Limburger or the heavy layers of Sauerkraut and Bologna with whieh he lines the coats of his stomach would bring pallor to Milesian cheeks grown ruddy on potatoes and milk.

Thus the stomach of one nation revolts at what is deemed a capital esculent and a dainty dish by another; and in no respect do men verify the dictum of Cicero, tot sæntenti quot capita, as in the diversity of their tastes and in their attachment to cuisineries as opposite as the poles. This proves that men have been guided in this respect by blind experience, which can adduce no stronger argument in favor of any dish than the mere fact that it does not dis

agree with the stomach; nor can it be said that instinct has aught to do in the matter, since instinct is uniform in its teachings, and the preference we exhibit for certain dishes is the result of inveterate custom. Before man can therefore be assured that he is in entire conformity with nature in the selection and preparation of his food he must understand its chemical and physical composition and the various processes involved in digestion.

Before Liebig and the modern school of chemists made the first step towards the true solution of the many difficulties which surround those questions, thinking men of all times had busied themselves variously in attempting to explain the mysterious processes by which nature converts food into the living tissues of the body, while the masses, taking their appetite for their sole guide, found full satisfaction in its gratification. Perhaps few chapters in the history of the human mind exhibit in a more marked manner its weaknesses and eccentricities than those which relate to the selection and preparation of food among different nations, and in different ages, and the means by which enervated communities strive to gratify their pampered appetites. The earliest records we have of cooking are those of the Jewish people, and the only item of their dietary it is worth while here to note is that which relates to the eating of swineflesh and the blood of animals generally. Voltaire and his friends saw in this prohibition a useless ordinance, a distinction founded on no difference, and accordingly derided it as they did the other provisions of the Jewish laws. But in this, as in many other respects, modern science has vindicated the Mosaic record against the sneers of those pseudophilosophers.

The microscope has demonstrated the existence of an animalcule which especially infests the flesh of the hog and which, when introduced into the human system, produces a lingering and wasting disease. This animalcule is known as the cysticercus cellulosa, and the disease has just been ravaging Europe under the name of trichina. As for blood, it contains but imperfectly the elements of nutrition, and is laden with the refuse matter which it has washed from the parts to which it supplied nutriment. The flesh of kids broiled on embers, and course bread, furnished a regime as simple and wholesome as could be desired, and entirely suited to a people who led a wandering life. The other nations of the East were more choice in their food, and sought to coax their

palate by spicy condiments and new combinations. The Egyptian, who detested the lovers of haut gout in meat, cooked his beef or goose immediately after it was killed, and ate all but the head, which, as Herodotus says, he held in pious abhorrence. They were very partial to vegetables, which they cooked in the juice of their meat till a superstitious reverence for the products of the garden forbade their use at table. This folly of theirs Juvenal has handed down in the lines

"Porrum et cepe nefas violare ac frangere morsu,

O sanctas gentes quibus hoc nascuntur in hortis.
Numina."

But the Greeks were the first to elevate cookery from its crude state, and impart to it the elegance and taste which marked the progress of the other arts among them. Hitherto broils were the chief pièces de resistance, and were flanked by the humble leek or garlic. The early efforts of even the Greeks shared the same simplicity; and there is reason to suspect that the hard-fighting heroes of Homer had no more dainty viand to coax their appetite, or stay the cravings of hunger than the broiled flesh of bulls and goats; for, as Madame Dacier remarks, we find no mention of boiled meats in any of the Homeric menus. Like every art, therefore, which contributes largely to the comfort and happiness of man, cookery progressed slowly, and only reached its zenith in conjunction with the arts of eloquence, sculpture, and painting, which were the ornament and glory of the age of Pericles. The traditions, however, which inform us of the achievements of the Grecian cuisine are so vague and uncertain as to cast but the faintest radiance on the subject, and archæophilists have no greater loss to mourn than the missing monograms which revealed the tendencies of the Greek mind with reference to this important and interesting ques

tion.

The work most frequently mentioned is a didactic. poem by Archestratus, a gastronome of irreproachable taste and the intimate friend of the house of Pericles. Athenæus

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says that this poem was a treasure of science-every verse a precept." Indeed, we may not wonder at this, since we have it on the same authority that the writer braved the perils of the sea and cheerfully submitted to the inconveniences of travel to obtain a comparative digest of the gastronomical peculiarities of different nations. Probably the most accomplished feat the culinary art among the Greeks

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