of his structure which would
exclude flesh meats, should also exclude cookery. Or, in other words, if
he is not permitted to depart from the line of life which his structure
indicates, he must no more cook his vegetables than eat animal food.
Besides, he is made, as Cuvier supposes, for artificial society, and the
Creator designed him to _improve_ his food; and, if I understand his
reasoning, he is better able, with his present structure of teeth, jaws,
stomach, intestines, etc., to make this improvement, and rise above his
nature, and yield to the force and indications of reason and experience,
than if he possessed any other known living structure.

To this structure, however, as well as to the same power of adaptation,
the monkey race, and especially the ourang-outang, closely typo
approximates. Cuvier's reasoning, in my view, applies only to the
adaptability (if I may be allowed the expression) of the human animal,
without deciding how far he should avail himself of his power to make
changes.

DR. LUTHER V. BELL.

I have alluded, in another part of this work, to the prize essay of Dr.
Bell, awarded to him by the Boylston Medical Committee on the subject of
the diet of laborers in New England. Dr. Bell is a physician of
respectable talents, and is at present the Physician to an Insane
Hospital in Charlestown, near this city.

Dr. Bell admits, with the most distinguished naturalists and
physiologists of Europe,--Cuvier, Lawrence, Blumenbach, Bell of London,
Richerand, Marc, etc.,--that the structure of man resembles closely that
of the monkey race; and hence objects to the conclusion to which some of
these men have arrived (by jumping over, as it were), that man is an
omnivorous animal. He freely allows--I use his own words--"that man does
approximate more closely to the frugivorous animals than to any others,
in physical organization." But then he insists that the conclusion which
ought to be drawn from this similarity "is, that he is designed to have
his food in about the same state of mechanical cohesion, requiring about
the same energy of masticatory organs, as if it consisted of fruits,
etc., alone."

But, wherefore should we draw even this conclusion, if structure and
instinct prove nothing, and if we are to be governed solely by reason,
without regard to structure and instinct? For my own part, I believe
reason is never true reason, when it turns wholly out of doors either
instinct or the indications of