Vegetable cookery : with an introduction, recommending abstinence from animal food and intoxicating liquors / By a lady.

Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vegetable cookery : with an introduction, recommending abstinence from animal food and intoxicating liquors / By a lady. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    and lie will make a hole in the ground with them to get at a mouse; but he will not burrow in the ground to escape from the cold : therefore it would be absurd to infer that he was designed by nature to live like a rabbit. The ouran-outang and man have similar teeth; the former lives entirely on fruits, and the latter gives proof that he can devour every kind of animal, from the oyster to the elephant. Another question asked by the opposers of this humane system is,4 If we should live entirely on vegetable food, what would become of the cattle ? They would grow so numerous, they would produce a famine, or eat us up if we did not kill and eat them.’ These are rather suppositions than arguments, mere fancies, because unexperienced. But it may be observed that there are abundance cf animals in the world which men do not kill for food, and yet we do not hear of their in- juring mankind, or becoming too numerous. Besides, multiparous animals live but a short time, and many of them perish unless attention is paid to them by men. Cattle are at present an article of trade, and their numbers are industriously promoted. If cows and sheep were kept solely for their milk and fleece, and if they should become too numerous, man- kind would readily find means of reducing them, with- out having recourse to the butcher’s knife. We need not, however, at present be under any apprehension in this country of being eaten up by cows and sheep, for there is sufficient land for the support of a great increase both of men and animals. England alone, which now contains only about twelve millions of inhabitants, is capable of producing, by spade husbandry, a sufficiency of nutritive vegetables for the support of one hundred and twenty millions of human beings: but if every one must consume a pound of flesh a day, there is scarcely enough of land for the existing population: we are therefore more