Various

“ As the engine obtains the necessary conditions from the fuel and water it consumes, so the living body derives its energy from the food upon which it subsists. Food in this light is therefore merely matter taken from the outside world, and from which our bodies derive the substances required for the repair of the waste which the continual work of life entails. In the young, food serves a double purpose—it supplies material for growth, and it also affords substance from which the supply of force is derived. ”

“ There is always the delicious air, turn where you will; and the grass, the very touch of which refreshes.’ Besides all this, there is the peculiar beauty which gives its chief charm to all elevated situations, the interest of the panorama which spreads around and beneath—the distant trees which wave in the freshening breeze; the gleam of light which brings out into strong relief the warm bit of colouring supplied by the tiled roof of yonder farmhouse; the flashes of sunshine which brighten up the gloom, and chase the shadows across the swelling uplands and green low-lying meadows beyond. ”

“ The work in question was proved to have been performed on the carbon and hydrogen of the food consumed. These experiments have led to the now accepted view, that a muscle, instead of losing substance during work and thus wasting, in reality consumes nitrogen, and grows. The exhaustion of the muscle is dependent not so much on chemical waste, as on the accumulation within it of the waste products of other foods. The muscle, in other words, is merely the agent whereby so much energy, derived from the food, is converted into actual and applied force. ”

“ The rise and fall of the chest in the sleeping man remind us that it is not death but his ‘twin-brother sleep,’ that we are observing. If we make a calculation respecting the work which the heart of a man, idle or active, performs in twenty-four hours, we may discover that it represents an amount of labour equal to one hundred and twenty foot-tons. That is to say, if we could gather all the force expended by the heart during its work of twenty-four hours into one huge lift, such force would be equal to that required to raise one hundred and twenty tons-weight one foot high. ”

“ The idle man grows hungry and thirsty with the regularity of the man who works. He demands food and drink as does his energetic companion; and the plea that idleness can need no food-support, may be met in a singularly happy and forcible fashion by a plain scientific consideration. In the first instance, the idle man might, by an appeal to science, show, that whilst he apparently spent life without exertion, his bodily functions really represented in their ordinary working an immense amount of labour. ”

“ If the prisoner wishes to have counsel assigned to him for his defence, I will name a gentleman, and will take care that the prisoner shall have due opportunity for his instruction; and if you desire to give evidence on his behalf, you can do so.—Prisoner, is it your wish that counsel be assigned to you for your defence?’
Harden had been standing with his head slightly bent, and his clasped hands resting on the rail of the dock. He now looked up at the judge, and replied in a grave and impassive voice: ‘My lord, I wish no help but the help of God. I am in His hands, and I am an innocent man. ”

“ So the present steps by us; pain and sorrow plant milestones on our way; by-and-by the eye glances tenderly backward and over them, and in old age we hear the voices of our youth.
‘Good-afternoon, Mr Beecham. Do you think it will rain?’
He lifted his head, and bowed to Madge and Philip as they were about to pass over the stile. He looked up at the sky. ”

“ In the collection of English pottery in the Museum is preserved the simple rustic memory of these tillers of the soil, the men who, centuries ago, ploughed like this simple countryman these beautiful English acres, scattering the seed over the furrows in the green flush of spring, and garnering the golden grain beneath the mellow skies of autumn. It is curious that so much of the unwritten history of our race should be preserved by so frail a thing as earthenware. ”

“ I don’t suppose that many people—at least English people, who are tolerably prejudiced in their way—have ever voluntarily gone in for a cuttle-fish or octopus diet, as they are horribly weird, uncanny animals to look at; and few, I opine, would feel inclined to make a ‘square meal’ off the shiny creatures, at least until other more prepossessing kinds of food remained to be tried. Nevertheless, throughout the whole of the Pacific, including Japan, all the different varieties of cuttle and octopus are regarded as a bonne bouche of peculiar excellence ”

“ The relations between food and work naturally present themselves as topics of the highest importance. In determining the standard of health, it is clear that from our food alone, we can obtain the energy or power of work required for the discharge of the duties of life. An interesting point therefore arises regarding the differences which are entailed by varying conditions and amounts of labour. Dr Letheby tells us that an adult man in idleness requires, to obtain from his food for the support of his body, 2.67 ounces of nitrogenous matter and 19.16 ounces of non-nitrogenous matter per day. ”

“ The other reason for the reputation for truth is, that, for credulous folk, unlucky omens are too terrible to be put to the test. If they were freely tried, they would be detected as a mental tyranny, a popular fraud; and in a few generations would be remembered by the rustic classes, only as the learned now remember the foolish excitement of their forefathers in science, seeking the Elixir of Life and the Philosopher’s Stone. ”

“ But we can readily see that mankind, with that elasticity of constitution and power to avail themselves of their surroundings, can adapt themselves to their environments, and become animal feeders, vegetable feeders, or subsist on a mixed dietary at will. This is the true solution of the vegetarian controversy. It is climate and race which determine the food of a nation. It is individual intelligence, liking, and constitution which determine variations and departures from the dietaries of the race. ”

“ She regarded with something like fear the enthusiasm with which Philip spoke of the social revolution he was to effect by means of the wealth placed at his command. Yet it was a noble object the youth was aiming at. Surely wealth could do no harm, when it was used for the purpose of making the miserable happy, of showing men how they might prosper, and teaching them the great lesson, that content and comfort were only to be found in hard work. ”

“ Man can obtain the required combination of nitrogenous and non-nitrogenous foods from animals alone, from vegetables alone, or from animals and vegetables combined. The water, of course, which is an absolutely essential feature of all dietaries, is regarded as an additional item. In regulating the dietary of mankind, it is found that the food of nations is determined largely, or completely, by their situation on the earth’s surface. Thus, the northern nations are largely animal feeders ”

“ Seen in the shifting lights and glooms of a breezy autumn day, this lofty, lonely spot seems a land of enchanted beauty, which holds the spectator spellbound, till masses of cloud, rolling up from the sea, throw deep purple shadows over the peaceful landscape, and warn him that darkness is about to fall over the flower-spangled slopes and gleaming sea beyond. ”

“ Summing up the question of the amounts of food required by a healthy adult daily, and excluding water in all forms as a matter of separate calculation, it may be said that four and a half ounces of pure nitrogenous matter would be required in addition to three ounces of fatty food, fourteen ounces of starch or sugar, and one ounce of mineral matter. An ordinary adult consuming in twenty-four hours, food items equal to those contained in one pound of meat and two pounds of bread, may be regarded as consuming food of sufficient amount for ordinary work. ”

“ It would seem absurd to a stranger to the country to be informed that such an insignificant animal as a bat could seriously threaten the fruit-harvest in countries where it is so abundant; but he would change his opinion when informed that the flying-foxes often settle in hundreds in any likely plantation; and as they always destroy very much more than they consume, the loss and inconvenience they cause to the natives may be properly estimated. ”

“ Common salt, or chloride of sodium, as it is chemically termed, although not entering into the composition of the body, appears to form an important part of all the secretions; and there can be little doubt that this mineral aids the formation and chemical integrity of the gastric juice of the stomach.
Water forms the last item in the list of non-nitrogenous foods. Of all foods, perhaps, water is the most important, seeing that it is a substance which, in the absence of all other nourishment, can sustain life for a period numbering many days. ”

“ Thus, whilst a man dies in from six to seven days when deprived of solid food and water, life may be prolonged to as many as sixty days on water alone. The high importance of water as a food is abundantly proved, when we discover that it constitutes about two-thirds of the weight of the body; that it enters into the composition of the brain to the extent of eighty per cent. ”

“ Thus, animal and plant substances represent organic foods; while water and minerals, both of which are absolutely essential for the support of the body, represent inorganic food materials. It would appear that from living matter alone, do we obtain the materials for generating force. The inorganic water and minerals, however, appear to be absolutely necessary for the chemical alterations and changes which are continually taking place within the body. ”

“ It may only here be added, that the education of the individual in health laws and in the science of foods and food-taking, forms the only sure basis for the intelligent regulation of that all-important work—the nourishment and due support of the frame in relation to the work we perform and to every circumstance of life. ”

“ The open slopes among the straggling firs, which dot like sentinels the borders of these pine-woods, are covered with forests of tail ferns, amid which the browsing cows are lost to sight, and only reveal their whereabouts by the tinkling music of the small bells suspended to their necks. ”

“ The interest of the case, which, except for that interest which is inseparable from a trial for murder, had slightly flagged, revived now that a human being was virtually at grips with death. For what had just passed meant that there was no defence or attempt at a defence, that the jury must convict, and that the man must die, without hope of mercy for so cowardly and ungrateful a murderer. ”

“ There is a country superstition that if a man sets off running and runs round in a circle, when he hears the cuckoo for the first time, he will never be out of work till spring comes again. But the man who valued steady work would exert himself in a more sensible direction than unproductive circle-running, and be safe from idle days. Again, if a tumble up-stairs is lucky, the predisposition to luck is in the person who will be active and quick enough to run up the staircase. ”

“ This animal, frugivorous in his tastes as a rule, does not for all that turn up his nose at a plump moth or a succulent beetle when they chance to come in his way; but he usually confines himself to fruit—ripe bananas of the best quality and plenty of them being about his mark; and dreadful havoc he and his friends would make in the banana gardens, if the natives—well aware of his habits—did not hasten to bind quantities of dead leaves round the ripening fruit, and so preserve it from his attacks. ”

“ The earth, air, fire, and water, are allied against civilised humanity; and modern science is constantly bringing to light disagreeable facts in this connection. We have long lived in the comfortable belief that Mother Earth was the great purifier. The reverse is, it seems, nearer the truth. Years after the germs of infection have been consigned to the ground, they have been disinterred, and found to be not a whit diminished in virulence. Archæologists should, we are told, beware of handling newly found relics, lest, perchance, they should contract some archaic disease. ”

“ Nor is heath awanting; ‘the open slopes beyond Sandown are covered with heath, growing so thickly, that even the narrow footpaths are hidden by the overhanging bushes of it. Beneath and amid the heath, what seems a species of lichen grows so profusely as to give a gray undertone to the whole.’
In autumn, this stretch of heath blazes out into a deep glory of purple, so rich and full, that it seems to give the very atmosphere a glow of purple light. Beyond the heath, there are fir-woods, stretching to the east and west ”

“ Our new friend no sooner finds himself caught, than he lets go the deceptive bait, and with his great goggle eyes staring hard at nothing in particular, sprawls about in the most awkward fashion, at the same time giving vent to a species of grunt, until at last he finally retires into the darkest corner he can find, and collapses into a lump of grayish-looking jelly, about a third part of his apparent size when in motion. ”

“ Liebig supposed that the nitrogenous foods required first to be actually converted into tissue—that is, into bodily substance—before their energy or work-producing power could be liberated. In this view, muscular force, through which we move, was believed to be dependent on the changes, destructive or otherwise, which take place in the muscles. The substance called urea, chiefly given off as a waste product by the kidneys and chemically representing nitrogenous waste, was in Liebig’s view regarded as representing the results of muscular force which had been exerted. ”

“ They are profusely covered with flowers in their season, with patches of furze, and with short thick grass, amid which the wild thyme luxuriates, spreading out into soft cushions of purple which might make a seat for a king, and permeating with its aromatic fragrance the whole keen air of the uplands. The furze is full of bird-life. Only game has decreased with the increase of cultivation ”