the Hindu and of the well-fed European, is probably as follows:--

Nitrogenous. Non-nitrogenous
(calculated as starch.)

Hindu 1 to 9
European 1 to 8

This statement does not quite correspond with Liebig's, who estimates
the proportion of nitrogenous to non-nitrogenous substances in rice as
10 to 123, in beef as ten to seventeen, and in veal as ten to one. The
results of Lawes and Gilbert's investigations, already alluded to, have,
however, dispelled the illusion that the plastic constituents of flesh
exceed its non-plastic. In the potato, which at one time constituted
more of the food of the Irish peasantry than rice does that of the
Hindu, the proportion of plastic to non-plastic materials is as 10 to
110. The results of some analyses of the food grains consumed in the
Presidency of Madras, made by Professor Mayer, of the University of
Madras, clearly prove that the food of the inhabitants of that part of
India is of a far more highly nitrogenous character than is generally
supposed. That the Hindu, who subsists exclusively on rice, exhibits
all the symptoms of deficient nutrition, is a fact to which numerous
competent observers have testified.

A slight consideration of the facts which I have mentioned leads to the
conclusion that the food of the inhabitants of very cold regions is
required to produce a large amount of heat. Melons, rice, and other
watery vegetable productions, however delicious to the palate of the
Hindu, would be rejected with disgust by the Esquimaux, whilst the train
oil, blubber, and putrid seal's flesh which the children of the icy
North consider highly palatable, would excite the loathing of the East
Indian. On this subject I may appositely quote the following remarks by
Dr. Kane, the Arctic explorer:--"Our journeys have taught us the wisdom
of the Esquimaux appetite, and there are few among us who do not relish
a slice of raw blubber, or a chunk of frozen walrus beef. The liver of
a walrus (awuktanuk), eaten with little slices of his fat--of a verity
it is a delicious morsel. Fire would seem to spoil the curt, pithy
expression of vitality which belongs to its uncooked juices. Charles
Lamb's roast pig was nothing to awuktanuk. I wonder that raw beef is not
eaten at home. Deprived of extraneous fibre, it is neither indigestible
nor diff