extensive a subject within the compass of twenty or
thirty pages, and because it did not seem to him to be called for, in
connection with the present volume. But he has yielded his own judgment
to the importunity of the publishers and other friends of the work, and
prepared a mere outline or skeleton of what he may hereafter fill up,
should circumstances and the necessary leisure permit.

But there is one difficulty to be met with at the very threshold of the
subject. Vegetable eaters are not so hard driven to find whereon to
subsist, as many appear to suppose. For the question is continually
asked, "If you dispense wholly with flesh and fish, pray what can you
find to eat?" Now, while we are aware that one small sect of the
vegetarians--the followers of Dr. Schlemmer--eat every thing in a raw
state, we are, for ourselves, full believers in plain and simple
cookery. That a potato, for example, is better cooked than uncooked,
both for man and beast, we have not the slightest doubt. We believe that
a system of preparing food which renders the raw material more
palatable, more digestible, and more nutritious, or perhaps all this at
once, must be legitimate, and even preferable--if not for the
individual, at least for the race.

But the difficulty alluded to is, how to select a few choice dishes from
the wide range--short of flesh and fish--which God and nature permit.
For if we believed in the use of eggs when commingled with food, we
should hardly deem it proper to go the whole length of our French
brethren, who have nearly seven hundred vegetable dishes, of which eggs
form a component part; nor the whole length even to which our own
powers of invention might carry us; no, nor even the whole length to
which the writer of an English work now before us, and entitled
"Vegetable Cookery," has gone--the extent of about a thousand plain
receipts. We believe the whole nature of man, and even his appetite,
when unperverted, is best served and most fully satisfied with a range
of dishes which shall hardly exceed hundreds.

It is held by Dr. Dunglison, Dr. Paris, and many of the old school
writers, that all made dishes--all mixtures of food--are "more or less
rebellious;" that is, more or less indigestible, and consequently more
or less hurtful. If they mean by this, that in spite of the
accommodating power of the stomach to the individual, they are hurtful
to the race, I go with them most fully. But I do _not_ believe that _all