pulses wholly unconnected with anything rational | reaction more or less severe throughout Europe, in the agent-are more and more curiously devel- has resulted in a conviction that the world, during oped the lower we go in the animal creation. That the whole period, actually possessed a sufficient in addition to what we strictly term instinct, ani- supply of food, and that a deficient means of dismals are endowed with so much of a still higher |tribution, together with a panic, peculiar to a state faculty termed reason, as will direct them so to of ignorance, but which would not exist in a state modify their instinctive impulses as to adapt their of enlightenment, was the chief cause of the ordinary habits and actions to extraordinary circum- misery, excitement, mad speculation, and widestances. And as a general summary, we may spread ruin to individuals that have ensued. adopt the words of the archbishop : “To sum up, then, what has been hitherto said. It appears that there are certain kinds of intellectual power-of what, in man, at least, is always called reason-common, to a certain extent, to man with the higher brutes. And again, that there are certain powers wholly confined to man-especially all those concerned in what is properly called reasoning -all employment of language as an instrument of thought; and it appears that instinct, again, is to a certain extent common to man with brutes, though far less in amount, and less perfect in man; and more and more developed in other animals the lower we descend in the scale. The question arising is-must this irregularity and misery be a constant condition of humanity? Is it an ordinance of Providence, or an ignorance that can be removed by attaining higher steps in mental and physical progress? Must we read the Scripture phrase "The poor shall never cease from out of the land" as a denunciation of constantly recurring famine, or simply as an assertion of the physical and mental inequality of mankind, and an injunction on human power to protect human poverty? We hold to the latter! We cling to the belief that human misery is synonymous with human ignorance, and that the Being who has planted reason within us, gave us that reason to enable us to develop every branch of knowledge, and remove from us these conditions, which are positive evils to civilized humanity, but salutary laws where mere instincts are the incentives to action. In common with the lower animals, the first want of mankind is food. Savage man, like the wild beasts, consumes natural or spontaneous food. Civilized man is supported on artificial food, in the "An instinct is, as has been said before, a blind tendency to some mode of action, independent of any consideration on the part of the agent of the end to which the action leads. Hunger and thirst are no less an instinct in the adult than the desire of the new-born babe to suck, although it has no idea that milk is in the breast, or that it is nutritious. When, on the other hand, a man builds a house in order to have shelter from the weather, and a comfortable place to pursue his trade, or reside in, the act is not called instinct; while that term does apply to birds building a nest; because man has not any blind desire to build the house. The rudest savage al-production of which skill and labor have been ways contemplates, in forming the hut, the very applied. Wild animals, and wild fruits and roots object of providing a safeguard against the weather, supply wild men thinly scattered over a wilderand perhaps against wild beasts and other enemies.ness. But, supposing man had the instinct of the bird; supposing a man who had never seen a house, or thought of protecting himself, had a tendency to construct something analogous to a nest; or, again, supposing a bird was so endowed with reason as to build a nest with a view to lay eggs therein, and sit on them, with a design and in order to perpetuate its species; in the former case, man would be a builder from instinct; and in the latter, the bird would be a builder from reason."-p. 20. From the Westminster Review. 1. The Granaries of Great Britain; or, Perpetual Preservation of Food. 2. Equalizing prices and diminishing risk to Food Manufacturers and Food Dealers. CHARLES LAMB records that roast pig was a Chinese discovery, accidentally made by the burning down of a house, and that for many years it was deemed essential to burn down houses in order to attain that delicate edible, being in fact not roast pig, but burnt-house pig. Even thus do we in England talk of "mummy wheat" 3,000 years old, and yet capable of germination. We have not yet asked ourselves the question whether the "mummy" be essential, or whether the wheat might not be preserved 3,000 years without the "mummy." Cultivated animals and cultivated plants furnish food for the cultivated men; and thus population thickens and arts advance, and it would be a very fair standard to measure the civilization of nations by the quantity and varieties of their artificial food. In the wild state, all animal nature of the carnivorous kind is supported by prey, and the human hunter exists by the same law. Life is supported by the destruction of life. Even when we have cultivated our animal food, by changing the argali into a sheep, the bison into an ox, the savage boar into a tame hog, and many other similar processes, we only make a variation without altering the condition of the law of prey. We increase the quantity, but frequently also deteriorate the quality. No artificial animal food can compare with the wild venison of the wild thymy heath as a healthy nutriment, in producing, or rather in maintaining, a sound body for a sound mind. The perception of this truth will continue to gain ground and produce a change in the mode of training animals for food, till the time shall come when the law of prey will disappear before the law of huma reason. Let us not be understood as advocating the bigotry of "vegetable diet" as an universal food. The varieties of temperament in human beings are The painful realities of Irish famine, and the countless, and so should be the qualities of their food. It is the province of chemistry to solve the "Like follows like throughout this mortal span; so when the fight is over I should like to cat steaks from one of those brown deevils of Ingeuns yonder to try what he eats like." We looked at the speaker, thinking he jested, but it was no jest. It was simply a man of average intellect, and very coarse nerves, who stood before us-one who by force of habit might have obeyed moral laws, but too coldly practical ever to discover them for himself. He was merely going a little beyond the practices of his wild companions. They, albeit Christians, were in the habit of skinning their human foes to make horse-trappings of their hides; he, from curiosity, was desirous to taste their flesh. Possibly he might have called himself a Christian also. We did not ask him his descent, but it struck us that after all, the story of Sawney Beane* might be no fable. Such a man, placed in a position where the only food was human flesh, would have made his experiment a habit, and would have enjoyed his cannibal meals with as much relish as a chief of the Feejee Islands. Our civilized habits, in slaughtering animals for our food, are akin to savage nature. We should regard with distaste the man who could voluntarily kill and eat his own dog, or his cosset lamb, or turtle dove. This difficulty is got rid of by selling the lamb and dove to another-exchanging lambs and doves, precisely as Feejee mothers are said to exchange their children in time of scarcity, in order not to devour their own. All this is merely cheating the conscience; palliating the evil, not trying to remove the cause of it. The practice of hunting wild animals for food engenders a disregard of animal life, which gradually extends to fellow human beings. All history will bear testimony to the fact, that hunters are men of violence, from Esau, who frightened Jacob, down to Grantley Berkeley, who "punches the heads" of peasants. It was our fortune-good or bad to sojourn for a long period in sunny climes, amongst human tribes, half pastoral half predatory, who lived on horseback, whose sole food was the flesh of recently slain animals and their drink brackish water, their couch the grassy plain, and their roof the blue heaven. Lean, wiry, and lithe of body, with cat-like, half-sleepy eyes, and long black horse-looking hair, these people possessed If we examine the question logically, it runs the attributes of tigers, and they passed their time thus: A large portion of the people living in a half in sloth, and half in ferocity. Often witness- state of civilization require food of a highly stiming, and sometimes compelled to join in the eating ulating kind. Our limited progress in chemistry of half-roasted flesh, torn from an animal just slain, forbids our finding this food otherwise than in animal and the mass still quivering, we have learned how, flesh. But with refined habits the great mass of by slight degrees, refinement departs, and the mind the community has acquired a horror at the thought becomes callous to horrors and bloodshed. The of butchering animals. A Whitechapel kennel or slightest word of provocation, and drawn knives to Whitechapel cellar, the rows of butchers' shops, gratify revenge, the dried blood of the animal on are all objects passed by and spoken of with disthe blade mingling with the red torrent flowing gust. A practical butcher we regard as a Helot. from human veins, was a common occurrence. Why is this? Only because the habit of shedding To dress wounds was an almost daily task, and at blood has a tendency to brutalize. If this be so, last a drudgery, from which even compassion what right have we to set others to do that which shrunk. The gradual callousness of the natives is disgusting to ourselves? Or is it a right thing of more civilized climes was remarkable. Wounds to doom certain human beings to eternal brutality' became a matter for mirth. On one occasion, There are jungle deserts in some parts of India encamped rudely, awaiting the attack of some hos-through which foot postmen carry the letter-bags. tile tribes, with bristling spears and prepared rifles, Occasionally postman after postman disappears in a native of Scotland, a mechanic of ordinary decent habits, tolerably educated, and possessing some five thousand pounds capital, entered into conversation with us-calculating the strategy of their position, and the number that would be slain, all in the cool, quiet, guttural Saxon dialect, denominated Lowland Scotch. And, gliding from one subject to another, as easily as if discussing a chapter of Adam Smith, he thus went on. "Wall, noo, awm thinkin' that we 've tried maist kinds o' flesh meat-bull and quey and cauf, and horse, and mule, and lion and deer, and ostrich and armadillo, and bees-catcher and your common swine *Sawney Beane, as the tradition goes, was a Scottish outlaw, who had committed so many robberies and muṛders that a large price was set on his head, and concealment became difficult. In his emergency, he discovered a large cavern on the coast only accessible at low water. Here he took shelter with a congenial wife; and to destroy the evidences of murder, he used to carry the bodies of his victims to his cavern, and ate them as butchers' meat, both fresh and salted. On such food, he "raised” a stock of children, and lived respectably after his own moral standard. But though the water "on the salt sea's marge" could obliterate his footsteps' traces, it was not so with the smoke of his hideous kitchen on the blue heaven. He was tracked at last, and his race extinguished, without any experiment as to the possibility of eradicating the cannibal habits of the children. succession. Search is made, and their remains, | whatever constituted the flavoring matter, was with the letters, are found in the tiger's den. This wanting. The same thing takes place with cooked is thought horrible, and the tiger is shuddered at meat which is several days old, though not putrid. as something fiendlike. Yet how, in truth, does If we can once discover the principle of the aromas, this differ from the cellar of a butcher, strewed so to prepare them artificially, the arrangement of with the carcasses of sheep and oxen? Could the the solid bases of human food will probably not intiger reason, he might complain of the injustice volve any great difficulty. There is no more of a that holds him up to odium for keeping dead men's miracle in this, than in the common experiment of bodies in his cellar as food, while men in their preparing sugar from old rags or sawdust. cellars keep the dead bodies of sheep for the same object. These are speculations at which probaby existing practical men will smile, till future more practical men shall realize them; and meanwhile the question remains how most efficiently to apply our existing food, in the animal and vegetable forms, so as always to have a surplus on hand in readiness for emergencies-how, in short, to enable the speculator to store up food as well as other commodities, without risk of destruction? If a merchant buy a shipload of pipes of wine or brandy, he can deposit them in the London docks, and they become a property, on which, if he produces the certificate or dock warrant, he can raise by mortgage within ten per cent. of the total value. But if he buy a shipload of wheat, or other grain, and deposit it in a granary, he can raise no money at all on it, because it is fluctuating in value; and, moreover, "there be land rats and water rats," and mice, and thieves, and weevils, and germination, and decomposition, and expenses of turning Can we alter this? Can we abolish the law of prey? Let our chemists fairly try the experiment. Liebig has shown that certain chemical ingredients, in certain proportions, must be taken into our bodies at intervals, in order to supply heat, and the waste of our bodies. Sugar, butter, and similar substances supply the former; blood and flesh containing nitrogen supply the latter. To procure these substances we manure the ground with their constituent materials. On the ground so manured we grow plants. On these plants we feed sheep and cattle. These sheep and cattle we cause to be slaughtered, and then bury them in our stomachs. The problem then first is, how to dispense with part of these processes?-to concentrate in the vegetables a sufficient amount of the chemical ingredients constituting flesh and fat, so as to pass them at once into the human stomach, without going through the animal form? To produce animal-over and measuring. In short, while the pipes of ized vegetables is the problem. Nor can this be wine remain a fixed quantity, the grain is a condeemed very difficult, if we divest our thoughts of stantly decreasing quantity. It goes into the grancabbages, turnips, carrots, potatoes, and similar ary corn, and comes out rotten bran. It has often coarse watery vegetables, and reflect that there are occurred to us that the term "animalized biscuit," also olives, nuts, and other oily vegetables, and may have been originally suggested by some wagthat there are mushrooms-which seem to form gish miller, who after doing his utmost to winnow the link between animal and vegetable substances. | away the weevil, finding the majority of the little Our culinary vegetables, in their existing state, are black vermin too snugly ensconced each in his barnot natural productions, but results of art, which ley or wheat corn, fairly ground them up in deart may be enhanced by chemistry and horticultural spair, and, to account for the strange flavor, gave skill, till it will be possible to produce a vegetable them a name indicating to willing believers the combining the qualities of the olive and the mush-pleasant calves' foot association of gelatine. Be room. When this shall be accomplished it may this as it may, it is certain that the lieges of Great be possible to dispense with animal food, and the Britain may fairly claim the creature weevil as law of reason shall triumph in the extinction of constituting part of the food of man. Weevils eat the law of prey, by the progress of art, which is wheat, and working men eat weevils; buying but another name for man's developed nature. bread of "small profits and quick returns." WeeWhether our chemists will ultimately succeed vil may be good or may be bad, as food of men, in preparing nourishing and stimulating food wholly but assuredly it must be expensive food, inasmuch from inorganic matter, is another problem. When as its maintenance while getting up flesh is costly the mysteries of flavors and aromas shall be un--in farmer phrase, weevil "eats more than his folded to us, those subtle influences which appear head is worth." to constitute the principle of nutrition, it is probable that we shall attain this end. There appears to be no chemical difference between the odor of coal tar and attar of roses, more than between charcoal and diamond; yet in their action on our senses they are wholly distinct. It was once our lot to live for a time on the flesh of cattle driven with a caravan during a long journey. The flesh of these animals, though not lean, was devoid of all flavor. It was tasteless as chopped hay. The people called it "tired meat." It did not nourish: the ozmazone, or animal spirit, or electricity, or With regard to animal food a similar difficulty prevails; it is limited in its term of durability. It is not fit for food while fresh, i. e. tough, and after it has become tender small is the interval between that and putridity; and, therefore, the public must pay a high price to compensate the dealer for his risk; unless the primitive practice be resorted to of making contract by sound of bell, to ensure the sale of the whole previous to killing. In all articles of periodical produce, and especially in food, it will be found that the fluctuations in price are greatest in proportion to the difficulty of preservation. The mass of mankind are conservative, and indisposed to take risks. The speculative few must be paid in proportion to their risks. During a personal residence in Spanish America we observed that the usual price of wheat in harvest time was half-a-dollar the fanega; but mid-time between harvests it usually rose to a whole dollar. A rainy season occurred and produced blight, and the maximum price was three dollars. Scarcity and ignorance induced the preservation of the worst wheat for sowing, and the following year the price rose to twenty dollars. Flour in barrels then first became an import from the United States into the granary of the Pacific. To the want of efficient granaries was this evil mainly owing, and as in Ireland, the people resorted to sea-weed in their extremity. i. e. underground pits of peculiar soil, covered in with earth. Wheat thus treated lasts many years. The French armies were accustomed to hunt for these deposits for subsistence. A flat stone usually covered the opening; and on its removal a quantity of deleterious gas generally rushed out, sometimes killing the opener with asphyxia. In Canada West, hunters and Indians make deposits of corn and other things in artificial caverns called caches, chosen in dry spots, and covered over. In some of the internal parts of Spanish America, the common granary is the skin of an ox taken off entire, and the legs and neck being tied round, it is filled with tightly-rammed earth through a hole in the back, while suspended between posts. When dried to a state of parchment, the earth is taken out, and the bloated bag, resembling a huge hippopotamus, is filled with grain, which is thus kept air and vermin proof. in blocks of stone or ancient trees, and then resumed their vital functions, unchanged by time. The preservation of food has at most periods been an object; but the usual processes of man have been, for the most part, little in advance of Three conditions are essential to the process of the squirrels and other animals; less than those putrefaction; viz., heat, moisture, and still air. of the bees, which have an instinctive perception | With wind, moisture is carried off; with cold, the of the true principle, viz., the exclusion of air, decomposing process is checked, as may be seen which they accomplish by hermetically sealing up by the carcasses of animals that lie through the their honey-cells. In some cases this principle is winter in snowy mountains, and dry up to glue. aimed at, but in a clumsy way. Preserved pro- Without air, everything is locked up and remains visions, as meat, fish, soup, and milk, are en-in statu quo; as reptiles have been buried for ages closed in hermetically sealed tin cases, and rendered durable for years. The air in these cases is excluded by the agency of heat and a partial cooking. The expense of these methods prevents their being more than a luxury. Potted meats are prepared with antiseptics, and the air is excluded by a covering of melted fat. Green fruits and vegetables are enclosed in sealed bottles, from which the air has been driven out partially by heat. Meats, antiseptically treated, are also preserved from the air by enclosing in a bladder or gut, in the form of sausages. Salted meat in brine is preserved partly antiseptically by the salt, and partly by immersion in the liquid brine. Smoked meats are preserved, partly antiseptically by the empyreumatic acid, and partly by the watery particles being driven off by the heat, so that the meat becomes a kind of glue, and the air is excluded. Dry cakes of glue may be preserved any length of time; but if they be moistened to admit the air, they soon putrefy. The charqui or jerked beef of Southern America is made into a glue by the heat of the sun, and thus assumes the character of cheese; decomposing by mites in the same man ner. Dried flesh of this kind, mixed with butter or fat, is the pemican of North West America, from which air is thus excluded. Egyptian mummies have the air excluded by bandages. There are various modes in which grain is preserved, some intentional, some accidental. What are called brewers' grains, or spent malt, the cowkeepers in the neighborhood of London seek to preserve by covering them over in pits. The air is not excluded, and therefore the method is inefficient. What is called mummy wheat has been preserved by the effectual exclusion of the air. In Spain, wheat is preserved in what are called silos, In direct opposition to these principles are the granaries of Great Britain and other countries constructed. Their site is generally the bank of a river, or the sea-side. They are built of many floors, at a vast expense. They are provided with many windows, each floor being the height of a man, yet not permitting more than twelve to fifteen inches depth of grain on each floor for fear of heating, unless in the case of very old samples. Men are continually employed to turn the grain over, to ventilate it, and clear out the vermin; and the weevil is naturalized in every crevice, as surely as bugs in neglected London beds, or cockroaches in West Indian sugar ships. It is the admission of air that permits this evil, that promotes germination, that permits the existence of rats and mice. In the exclusion of air is to be found the remedy. The practicalization of this is neither difficult nor costly; on the contrary, close granaries might be constructed at far less proportional cost than the existing kind. They might be made under ground as well as above ground, in many cases better They might be constructed of cast iron, like gasometer tanks; or of brick and cement; or of brick and asphalte, like underground water-tanks. It is only required that they should be air-tight, and consequently water-tight. A single man-hole at the top, similar to a steam boiler, is all the opening required, with an air-tight cover. The airpump has long ceased to be a philosophic toy, and has taken its place in the arts as a manufacturer's tool; and no difficulty would exist as to that portion of the mechanism. Now, if we suppose a large cast-iron or brick cylinder sunk in the earth, the bottom being conical, and the top domed over; ous kinds of goods subject to damage in transitsuch as are hermetically sealed in tin cases; and thus the expense of package would be saved. In reservoirs on shore the air might not merely be pumped out; warm air might be pumped in, to dry damp grain. Water might also be pumped in and out to cleanse the grain. an air-pump adjusted for exhausting the air, and | partments, and also more buoyant. And the same an Archimedean screw-pump to discharge the arrangements would be equally available for varigrain, we have the whole apparatus complete. If we provide for wet grain, a water-pump may be added, as to a leaky ship. Suppose, now, a cargo of grain, partly germinating, and containing rats, mice, and weevils, to be shot into this reservoir, the cover put on and luted, and the air-pump at work, the germination would instantly cease, and the animal functions would be suspended. If it be objected that they would revive with the admission of the air, we answer, that the air need not be admitted, save to empty the reservoir. If it be contended that the reservoir may be leaky, we answer, so may a ship; and if so, the air-pump must be set to work just as is the case with a water-pump in a leaky ship. : Similar reservoirs or magazines on a smaller scale might be constructed for butchers or other provision dealers, and meat might be preserved fresh for weeks in the heat of summer, preventing the necessity of waste, or of selling at ruinously low prices; and so with the fish brought to Billingsgate or other markets. On the same principle there is no doubt that fresh meat, as sea stock, might be carried instead of salt meat, and that fresh provisions might be transported from any part of the world to any other part. Pork, or beef, or mutton, or venison, might be killed in America, and transported into England. Weevilly biscuit would be a traditional commodity only, in the annals of sailor craft. "Water-tight compartments" is at present the expression for a safe ship. "Air-tight compartments" would be a term expressive of equal safety and far more general utility. The expense of airtight joints for the man-holes or openings would be but trifling. By the application of gutta percha, a perfect fit might at all times be ensured with scarcely any expense. The cost of an underground reservoir would possibly be more than one above ground, but it has the advantage of occupying space of other wise little value. One obvious cheapness of this improved granary over those now existing is, that that the whole cubic contents may be filled, whereas, in the existing mode, not above one fourth of the cubic contents can be rendered available. But many existing structures might be rendered eligible. For example the railway arches of the Eastern Counties, the Blackwall, and the Greenwich. In such cases the grain would be discharged into them from wagons on the line, in the mode used with coals. Reservoirs might be erected in farm yards, and the grain threshed out and carried from the harvest field direct, with the absolute certainty of preserving it any length of time that might be desired. Or, inasmuch as it is a certain thing that all farms must ultimately communicate with railways, by means of cheap horse-trains, or steam sidings, in order to work to profit, it would be desirable that the granary should be erected at some central railway station, where a steam mill, would do the work of exhausting the air, dis-on a railway on the edge of the quay. These charging the grain by Archimedean screw when required, and grinding it into meal. As regards the economy of transport of grain from foreign countries, the process would be as follows: The corn brought down the Mississippi to New Orleans, or by canal or rail to New York, would be discharged into the air-tight magazines of the vessel. On arriving at Liverpool, or Birkenhead, or Harwich, the Archimedean screwpump would discharge the grain into close wagons wagons might be rendered measurers of quantity, being all made to hold a given number of quarters; No better purpose could be found to which to and thus all labor and expense in measuring would apply the atmospheric engines and stations of the be saved. The wagons so loaded in bulk, and Croydon Railway with their existing air-pumps. without the expense of sacks, would discharge Communicating with all the southern wheat-their contents into reservoirs beneath the sidings; growing counties of England, and also with the say, for instance, the railway arches of the Eastern Thames, no spot could be more eligible as a central depôt. In connection with these arrangements it would be desirable to minimize the cost of transit in every possible way. Counties. There it might remain secure against all detriment for any number of years the owner might desire, with the minimum expense in transit and stowage. The wagons would be constructed The same arrangements that are good on land with a hatch at top and a discharge-pipe below. are also good at sea Many cargoes of wheat Lynn is the shipping port of Norfolk, where have been abandoned owing to heat and germina-grain is collected to forward by sea to the markets tion on their passage. Rats, mice, and weevils, of Yorkshire and elsewhere. With the granaries also, are very destructive. If the vessel were before described, in connection with railways, built with metal-lined air-tight compartments, the Lynn might become a centre for mills and biscuit air might be exhausted by pump; occasionally manufacture. The government dock-yards, comtrying the pump to insure against leakage; and municating with railways, might have similar esthus even new, undried grain, might be carried tablishments. There can be little doubt, that and delivered across the sea undamaged. Collat- with such arrangements, the prices of food would eral advantages would also be gained; the vessel be far less fluctuating, and that it would become would be more safe by means of air-tight com- a practicable thing to borrow money on food as on |
