The Chemistry of Cookery

by flint implements for the evident purpose of extracting the marrow, according to the domestic economy of the period. The shell mounds that these prehistoric bipeds have left behind, show that mussels, oysters, and other mollusca were also eaten raw, and they doubtless varied the menu with snails, slugs, and worms, as the remaining Australian savages still do. Besides these they probably included roots, succulent plants, nuts, and such fruit as then existed. There are many among us who are very proud of their ancient lineage, and who think it honourable to go back as far as possible and to maintain the customs of their forefathers; but they all seem to draw a line somewhere, none desiring to go as far back as to their inter-glacial troglodytic ancestors, and, therefore, I need not discuss the desirability of restoring their dietary. All human beings became cooks as soon as they learned how to make a fire, and have all continued to be cooks ever since. We should, therefore, look at this vegetarian question from the point of view of prepared food, which excludes nearly all comparison with the food of the brute creation. I say ‘nearly all,’ because there is one case in which all the animals that approach the nearest to ourselves—the mammalia—are provided naturally with a specially prepared food, viz. the mother’s milk. The composition of this preparation appears to me to throw more light than anything else upon this vegetarian controversy, and yet it seems to have been entirely overlooked. The milk prepared for the young of the different animals in the laboratory or kitchen of Nature is surely adapted to their structure as regards natural food requirements. Without assuming that the human dietetic requirements are identical with either of the other mammals, we may learn something concerning our approximation to one class or another by comparing the composition of human milk with that of the animals in question. I find ready to hand in Dr. Miller’s ‘Chemistry’, vol. iii., a comparative statement of the mean of several analyses of the milk of woman, cow, goat, ass, sheep,