knee-bending eighteen hundred times without exhaustion.... One remarkable difference between the two sets of men was the comparative absence of soreness in the muscles of the meat-abstainers after the tests.'

The question as to climate is often raised; many people labour under the idea that a vegetable diet may be suitable in a hot climate, but not in a cold. That this idea is false is shown by facts, some of which the above quotations supply. That man can live healthily in arctic regions on a vegetable diet has been amply demonstrated. In a cold climate the body requires a considerable quantity of heat-producing food, that is, food containing a good supply of hydrocarbons (fats), and carbohydrates (starches and sugars). Many vegetable foods are rich in these properties, as will be explained in the essay following dealing with dietetics. Strong and enduring vegetable-feeding animals, such as the musk-ox and the reindeer, flourish on the scantiest food in an arctic climate, and there is no evidence to show that man could not equally well subsist on vegetable food under similar conditions.

In an article entitled Vegetarianism in Cold Climates, by Captain Walter Carey, R.N., the author describes his observations during a winter spent in Manchuria. The weather, we are told, was exceedingly cold, the thermometer falling as low as minus 22° F. After speaking of the various arduous labours the natives are engaged in, Captain Carey describes the physique and diet of natives in the vicinity of Niu-Chwang as follows: 'The men accompanying the carts were all very big and of great strength, and it was obvious that none but exceptionally strong and hardy men could withstand the hardships of their long march, the intense cold, frequent blizzards, and the work of forcing their queer team along in spite of everything. One could not help wondering what these men lived on, and I found that the chief article was beans, which, made into a coarse cake, supplied food for both men and animals. I was told by English merchants who travelled in the interior, that everywhere they found the same powerful race of men, living on beans and rice—in fact, vegetarians. Apparently they obtain the needful proteid and fat from the beans; while the coarse once-milled rice furnishes them with starch, gluten, and mineral salts, etc. Spartan fare, indeed, but proving how easy it is to sustain life without consuming flesh-food.'

So far, then, as the physical condition of those nations who are practically vegetarian is concerned, we have to conclude that practice tallies with theory. Science teaches that man should live on a non-flesh diet, and when we come to consider the physique of those nations and men who do so, we have to acknowledge that their bodily powers and their health equal, if not excel, those of nations and men who, in part, subsist upon flesh. But it is interesting to go yet further. It has already been stated that mind and body are inseparable; that one reacts upon the other: therefore it is not irrelevant, in passing, to observe what mental powers are possessed by those races and individuals who subsist entirely upon the products of the vegetable kingdom.

When we come to consider the mentality of the Oriental races we certainly have to acknowledge that Oriental culture—ethical, metaphysical, and poetical—has given birth to some of the grandest and noblest thoughts that mankind possesses, and has devised philosophical systems that have been the comfort and salvation of countless millions of souls. Anyone who doubts the intellectual and ethical attainments of that remarkable nation of which we in the West know so little—the Chinese—should read the panegyric written by Sir Robert Hart, who, for forty years, lived among them, and learnt to love and venerate them as worthy of the highest admiration and respect. Others have written in praise of the people of Burma. Speaking of the Burman, a traveller writes: 'He will exercise a graceful charity unheard of in the West—he has discovered how to make life happy without selfishness and to combine an adequate power for hard work with a corresponding ability to enjoy himself gracefully ... he is a philosopher and an artist.'

Speaking of the Indian peasant a writer in an English journal says: 'The ryot lives in the face of Nature, on a simple diet easily procured, and inherits a philosophy, which, without literary culture, lifts his spirit into a higher plane of thought than other peasantries know of. Abstinence from flesh food of any kind, not only gives him pure blood exempt from civilized diseases but makes him the friend and not the enemy, of the animal world around.'

Eastern literature is renowned for its subtle metaphysics. The higher types of Orientals are endowed with an extremely subtle intelligence, so subtle as to be wholly unintelligible to the ordinary Westerner. It is said that Pythagoras and Plato travelled in the East and were initiated into Eastern mysticism. The East possesses many scriptures, and the greater part of the writings of Eastern scholars consist of commentaries on the sacred writings. Among the best known monumental philosophical and literary achievements maybe mentioned the Tao Teh C'hing; the Zend Avesta; the Three Vedas; the Brahmanas; the Upanishads; and the Bhagavad-gita, that most beautiful 'Song Celestial' which for nearly two thousand years has moulded the thoughts and inspired the aspirations of the teeming millions of India.

As to the testimony of individuals it is interesting to note that some of the greatest philosophers, scientists, poets, moralists, and many men of note, in different walks of life, in past and modern times, have, for various reasons, been vegetarians, among whom have been named the following:—

• Manu
• Zoroaster
• Pythagoras
• Zeno
• Buddha
• Isaiah
• Daniel
• Empedocles
• Socrates
• Plato
• Aristotle
• Porphyry
• John Wesley
• Franklin
• Goldsmith
• Ray
• Paley
• Isaac Newton
• Jean Paul Richter
• Schopenhauer
• Byron
• Gleizes
• Hartley
• Rousseau
• Iamblichus
• Hypatia
• Diogenes
• Quintus Sextus
• Ovid
• Plutarch
• Seneca
• Apollonius
• The Apostles
• Matthew
• James
• James the Less
• Peter
• The Christian Fathers
• Clement
• Tertullian
• Origen
• Chrysostom
• St. Francis d'Assisi
• Cornaro
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Milton
• Locke
• Spinoza
• Voltaire
• Pope
• Gassendi
• Swedenborg
• Thackeray
• Linnæus
• Shelley
• Lamartine
• Michelet
• William Lambe
• Sir Isaac Pitman
• Thoreau
• Fitzgerald
• Herbert Burrows
• Garibaldi
• Wagner
• Edison
• Tesla
• Marconi
• Tolstoy
• George Frederick Watts
• Maeterlinck
• Vivekananda
• General Booth
• Mrs. Besant
• Bernard Shaw
• Rev. Prof. John E. B. Mayor
• Hon. E. Lyttelton
• Rev. R. J. Campbell
• Lord Charles Beresford
• Gen. Sir Ed. Bulwer
• etc., etc., etc.

The following is a list of the medical and scientific authorities who have expressed opinions favouring