Bread-and-Olive culture results,
familiar to all visitors to Mediterranean lands. In the deciduous
forests of South-Central Europe there is grass in the clearings, and
milk enough; but goats and sheep are restricted, as the undergrowth
becomes deeper and denser, and the prime giver of fats is the
forest-bred pig: in a land rolling with ham and sausages we reach the
Bread-and-Bacon culture. Further afield still, and later, in proportion
as the forest is opened out by semi-pastoral folk, the moister summer
permits open meadow-land, with perennial grass, and the possibility of
hay. Here too the grain crops may be so large that there is something
over to fatten stock; and to Bread and Cheese the farmer of the
north-western plains adds Beef. When there is coarse grain in plenty, of
course, the large-boned horse of the north gradually replaces the ox at
the plough, and permits him to be bred, as with ourselves, not for
draught at all, but for milking and killing exclusively. It is in this
final phase that the Bread-and-Beef culture passes over eventually into
the New World, and into the South Temperate Zone. It has been rather a
long story to tell, and full of platitudes, but the gist of it is by
this time clear. Whatever be the superstructure of social institutions,
of arts and sciences, of religion and philosophy, that European men have
built upon it, the regime which has made the Western World what it is,
from before the dawn of metallurgy until now, has been generically a
Bread culture; based on that combination of pastoral and agricultural
life in which large cattle co-operate with man in the laborious
preparation of the soil which cereal crops require. But the Bread
culture itself is always supplemented by some form of milk product, of
which cheese is typical. It is almost always supplemented further by
some special provision of fats; in Mediterranean conditions by olives
and oil, involving extensive tree culture; in the forest region by pig's
meat; and on the Atlantic seaboard by butter and beef.

The exhilarants show the same geographic control; with the olive culture
go the wines and brandies of the south; with the forest culture, the
ciders and the cherry brandies of Central Europe; with the copious
cereals and meadow-grass, the beers and whiskies of the North. In
details, of course, the distribution of types is intricately confused;
but the main outline is clear; and we reach a first glimpse of a
coherent European