Most English people who can afford it eat more than is good for them on Christmas Day, and consider it more or less of a religious duty to do so, even though they shrink from the ordeal. It is an interesting tendency, and at the same time one readily explained. Primitive men, and our own remote ancestors, had few, if any, joys greater than those afforded by an abundant meal of roasted meat. When a great beast such as a mammoth was taken in a skilfully-prepared pitfall, and slaughtered, the whole tribe of palaeolithic huntsmen assembled and gorged themselves with its flesh, which, it seems fairly certain, they cooked on open fires. The strongest seized the most and ate the most, and were able to bear up the longest in something like full vigour until such time as another big beast should be killed, and another opportunity for “gorging” should arise, when they would naturally again get the largest share, having eaten most on the previous occasion, and so being least famished. Hence the belief that a great appetite is a fine thing, and that the more you can eat, the stronger and better you are, is one of the deeply-laid traditions of humanity which civilised men have inherited from barbarians, and are only slowly commencing to criticise and to put aside. The negroes who accompany European sportsmen in Central Africa gorge themselves when elephants are killed, and a recent account tells of the serious illness and danger to an expedition caused by the whole countryside flocking to the carcasses of twenty-three elephants killed by an ivory-hunter. The blacks continued to eat the flesh of the elephants for three weeks, when it had become decidedly “high,” and many died, whilst others took weeks to recover, in consequence. The notion of “festivity,” which, especially in England, has been, even in recent times, that of eating and drinking to excess, is prehistoric and barbaric. Serious physiologists and medical men have expressed the opinion that we shall never arrive at a satisfactory mode of nourishing ourselves so as to take neither too much nor what is in itself injurious to health, until the practice of seeking gaiety and celebrating a memory or honouring a friend or friends by means of profuse eating (often followed by wearisome speeches) has given place to a mode of rejoicing which is more likely to produce hilarity and lightness of heart, and less certain to be followed by painful and injurious results. We certainly eat less and drink less of intoxicating liquors than we did, but there is, it seems, still room for improvement.