Vegetable substances used for the food of man / [Edwin Lankester. Revised and partly rewritten].

  • Edwin Lankester
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vegetable substances used for the food of man / [Edwin Lankester. Revised and partly rewritten]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/518
    THE FOOD OF MAN. INTRODUCTION. The culture of the earth is a pursuit which in itself offers a sufficient distinction, not only between man and tlie inferior orders of animate creation, but also between man while in his merely animal state, and after he has become humanized by adopting the arts of civilization. It is this pursuit which must, in fact, ])recede, and be made the foundation for all other useful and ennobling occupations,—the spring whence must flow, certainly, the greater part of those reciprocal duties and affections which at once form society, and render it the source of- enjoyments. That man who first, among a tribe of hunters or fishers, sows a grain or jilants a root, and thus brings home the advantages of forethought to the “business and the bosoms” of his less provident fellows, becomes their benefactor, not merely by pointing out the means for avoiding the horrors of famine, and for lessening that succession of miseries which must attend upon a life of wandering, but also, by relieving their minds from the selfish exigencies that previously at- tended every moment, att'ording thereby leisure and opportunity for cultivating the social and kindly affec- tions. It is not until men have placed themselves be- yond that state of merely physical existence wherein the plenty of to-day may be followed by the destitution of to-rnorrow, that the higher faculties and feelings of our nature can be expanded. It must certainly, there- fore, be matter of more than common interest to obtain some knowledge of those vegetable substances throuch VOL. I. ,,
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