“As soon as old Parr came to change his simple homely diet to that of the Court and Arundel House, he quickly sank and drooped away; for, as we have shewn, the stomach easily concocts plain and familiar food, but finds it a hard and difficult task to vanquish and overcome meats of different substances. Whence we so often see temperate and abstemious persons of a collegiate diet [of a distant age, we must suppose] very healthy; husbandmen and laborious people more robust and longer-lived than others of an uncertain, extravagant habit.” He appeals to the biblical reverence of his readers, and tells them:-- “Certain it is, Almighty God ordaining herbs and fruit for the food of man, speaks not a word concerning flesh for two thousand years; and when after, by the Mosaic constitution, there were distinctions and prohibitions about the legal uncleanness of animals, plants of what kind soever were left free and indifferent for everyone to choose what best he liked. And what if it was held indecent and unbecoming the excellency of man’s nature, before sin entered and grew enormously wicked, that any creature should be put to death and pain for him who had such infinite store of the most delicious and nourishing fruit to delight, and the tree of life to sustain him? Doubtless there was no need of it. Infants sought the mother’s nipples as soon as born, and when grown and able to feed themselves, ran naturally to fruit, and still will choose to eat it rather than flesh, and certainly might so persist to do, did not Custom prevail even against the very dictates of Nature.[129] “And now to recapitulate what other prerogatives the hortulan provision has been celebrated for besides its antiquity, and the health and longevity of the antediluvians--viz., that temperance, frugality, leisure, ease, and innumerable other virtues and advantages which accompany it, are no less attributable to it. Let us hear our excellent botanist, Mr. Ray.” He then quotes the profession of faith of the father of English botany and zoology; and goes on eloquently to expatiate on the varied pleasures of a non-flesh and fruit diet:--