We have seen, then, that vegetarianism, though new as a propagandist doctrine, has its historical record; but if we wish thoroughly to understand its origin, we must go back beyond history to the more ancient and more durable evidence of the organic structure of Man. Here we come in conflict with what is, perhaps, the strangest of the many strange prejudices that oppose the humane diet—the superstition, so common among the uneducated, and connived at, if not shared, by some of the "scientific" themselves, that the verdict of comparative anatomy is fatal to the vegetarian claims. So far is this from being the case that the great naturalists, from Linnæus onward, give implicit judgment to the contrary, by classing mankind with the frugivorous family of the anthropoid apes. Thus Sir Richard Owen says: "The apes and monkeys, which man most nearly resembles in his dentition, derive their staple food from fruits, grain, the kernels of nuts, and other forms in which the most sapid and nutritious tissues of the vegetable kingdom are elaborated; and the close resemblance between the quadrumanous and the human dentition shows that man was, from the beginning more especially adapted 'to eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden.'"[5] Footnote 5: "Odontography," chap. x., p. 471, 1840-1845. This sentence is quoted only for what it is worth—viz., as proving that, in Owen's opinion, man was originally frugivorous. If the whole passage in "Odontography" be studied, it will be seen that Owen cannot fairly be cited as a vegetarian authority, because, after alluding to the fact that the apes occasionally eat insects, eggs, and young birds, he sums up in favour of what he calls "the frugivorous and mixed regimen of the quadrumana and man." This point I have dealt with later in the chapter. And here is the more recent verdict of Sir Benjamin Richardson: "On the whole, I am bound to give judgment on the evidence of the teeth rather in favour of the vegetarian argument. It seems fairest of fair to read from nature that the teeth of man were destined—or fitted, if the word destined is objected to—for a plant or vegetable diet, and that the modification due to animal food, by which some change has been made, is practically an accident or necessity, which would soon be rectified if the conditions were rendered favourable to a return to the primitive state.... By weighing the facts that now lie before us, the inference is justified that, in spite of the very long time during which man has been subjected to an animal diet, he retains in preponderance his original and natural taste for an innocent diet derived from the first-fruits of the earth."[6] Footnote 6: "Foods for Man," _Longman's Magazine_, 1888.