“13. _Because_ animals do not present or contain the substance of food in mass, like vegetables; every part of their economy being subservient to their mere existence, and their entire frames being solely composed of blood necessary for life, of bones for strength, of muscles for motion, and of nerves for sensation. “14. _Because_ the practice of killing and devouring animals can be justified by no moral plea, by no physical benefit, nor _by any just allegation of necessity in countries where there is abundance of vegetable food_, and where the arts of gardening and husbandry are favoured by social protection, and by the genial character of the soil and climate. “15. _Because_ wherever the number and hostility of predatory land animals might so tend to prevent the cultivation of vegetable food as to render it necessary to destroy and, perhaps, to eat them, there could in that case exist no necessity for destroying the animated existences of the distinct elements of air and water; and, as in most civilised countries, there exist no land animals besides those which are properly bred for slaughter or luxury, of course the destruction of mammals and birds in such countries must be ascribed either to unthinking wantonness or to carnivorous gluttony. “16. _Because_ the stomachs of locomotive beings appear to have been provided for the purpose of conveying about with the moving animal nutritive substances, analogous in effect to the soil in which are fixed the roots of plants and, therefore, nothing ought to be introduced into the stomach for digestion and for absorption by the _lacteals_, or roots of the animal system, but the natural bases of simple nutrition--as the saccharine, the oleaginous, and the farinaceous matter of the vegetable kingdom.”[250] Perhaps his most entertaining book is his _Morning Walk from London to Kew_ (1817). In it he avails himself of the various objects on his road for instructive moralising--as, for example, when he meets with a mutilated soldier, on the frightful waste and cruelty of war; or with a horse struggling up a precipitous hill in agony of suffering from the torture of the bearing-rein, on the common forms of selfish cruelty; or again, when he deplores the incalculable waste of food resources, by the careless indifferentism of owners of land and of the State in allowing the country to remain encumbered with useless, or comparatively useless, timber, in place of planting it with valuable fruit trees of various sorts according to the nature of the soil.