Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 July 1888 — What Primitive Man Ate. [ARTICLE]

What Primitive Man Ate.

Primitive man, wherever he was first cast, whether in one center or in more than one, most of necessity, have found his food in the plant world. "We cannot imagine him commencing his career learned in the arts of hunting, killing, and cooking the lower animals for food. Many infer from this circumstance that the argument in favor of the vegetarian practice is copied direct from nature, signed and delivered by her. Not quite so fast. There is one interposing barrier to the free acceptance of vegetarian deed and act of conveyance of food from nature to man. Nature herself, of her own right royal will, makes for animals, herbivorous and carnivorous, onedistinctive animal food; a secretion from the living animal organism, a fluid which is a standard food, meat and drink in one, the fluid known under the name of milk. Against absolute vegetarianism, then, we may fairly set up one exception derived from nature as the unerring guide. On observing the habits of animals we discover another natural fact. We find that animals of quite different natures, in respect to primitive selection of food, possess the power of changing their modes of feeding, and of passing over, as it were, from one class to another. This change is distinct but limited, and we must accept it with all its extension on the one side and with all its limitation on the other. The fruit-eating ape can be taught under privation to subsist on animal diet; a dog can, I believe, be taught to subsist on vegetable diet. But it would be as impossible to teach a sheep to eat flesh as it would be to make a lion feed on grass.— Dr. Richardson, in Longman’s Magazine.