In speaking of particular nations or tribes of this zone, he tells us that "the inhabitants of Biledulgerid and the desert of Sahara, have but two meals a day—one in the morning and one in the evening;" and "being temperate," he adds, "and strangers to the diseases of luxury and idleness, they generally live to a great age."[19] Sixty, with them, is the prime of life, as thirty is in Europe. "Some of the inland tribes of Africa," he says, "make but one meal a day, which is in the evening." And yet "their diet is plain, consisting mostly of rice, fruits, and roots. An inhabitant of Madagascar will travel two or three days without any other food than a sugar-cane." So also, he might have added, will the Arab travel many days, and at almost incredible speed, with nothing but a little gum-arabic; and the Peruvians and other inhabitants of South America, with a little parched corn. But I have one more extract from Lord Kaims:
"The island of Otaheite is healthy, the people tall and well made; and by temperance—vegetables and fish being their chief nourishment—they live to a good old age, with scarcely an ailment. There is no such thing known among them as rotten teeth; the very smell of wine or spirits is disagreeable; and they never deal in tobacco or spiceries. In many places Indian corn is the chief nourishment, which every man plants for himself."
DR. THOMAS DICK.
Dr. Dick, author of the "Philosophy of Religion," and several other works deservedly popular, gives this remarkable testimony:
"To take the life of any sensitive being, and to feed on its flesh, appears incompatible with a state of innocence, and therefore no such grant was given to Adam in paradise, nor to the antediluvians. It appears to have been a grant suited only to the degraded state of man, after the deluge; and it is probable that, as he advances in the scale of moral perfection in the future ages of the world, the use of animal food will be gradually laid aside, and he will return again to the productions of the vegetable kingdom, as the original food of man—as that which is best suited to the rank of rational and moral intelligence. And perhaps it may have an influence, in combination with other favorable circumstances, in promoting health and longevity."
PROFESSOR GEORGE BUSH.
Professor Bush, a writer of some eminence, in his "Notes on Genesis," while speaking of the permission to man in regard to food, in Genesis i. 29, has the following language:
"It is not perhaps to be understood, from the use of the word give, that a permission was now granted to man of using that for food which it would have been unlawful for him to use without that permission; for, by the very constitution of his being, he was made to be sustained by that food which was most congenial to his animal economy; and this it must have been lawful for him to employ, unless self-destruction had been his duty. The true import of the phrase, therefore, doubtless is, that God had appointed, constituted, ordained this, as the staple article of man's diet. He had formed him with a nature to which a vegetable aliment was better suited than any other. It cannot perhaps be inferred from this language that the use of flesh-meat was absolutely forbidden; but it clearly implies that the fruits of the field were the diet most adapted to the constitution which the Creator had given."
THOMAS SHILLITOE.
Mr. Shillitoe was a distinguished member of the Society of Friends, at Tottenham, near London. The first twenty-five years of his life were spent in feeble health, made worse by high living. This high living was continued about twenty years longer, when, finding himself fast failing, he yielded to the advice of a medical friend, and abandoned all drinks but water, and all food but the plainest kinds, by which means he so restored his constitution that he lived to be nearly ninety years of age; and at eighty could walk with ease from Tottenham to London, six miles, and back again. The following is a brief account of this distinguished man, when at the age of eighty, and nearly in his own words: