VEGETARIAN: Yes, but _what_ animal matter? CHEMIST: Oh, we don't go into that. VEGETARIAN: But I do; and I beg you to observe that the "matter likest to our own composition" is _human_ flesh, so that according to the Andrew Wilson formula, we all ought to be cannibals, because for human beings human flesh must be the most digestible of foods. CHEMIST: Very likely it is so, though I do not approve of cannibalism. VEGETARIAN: Then allow me to read you a sentence from C. F. Gordon Cumming's book, "At Home in Fiji." "At every cannibal feast there was served a certain vegetable, also commonly used by the cannibal Maoris of New Zealand, which was considered as essential an adjunct as mint-sauce is to lamb or sage to goose. Its use, however, was prudential, as human flesh _was found to be highly indigestible_, and this herb acted as a corrective." Now I ask you if that does not logically dispose of the Andrew Wilson formula? CHEMIST: Nonsense, sir! I will not discuss cannibalism. You fail to see that some things, though logical enough, may not be expedient. VEGETARIAN: I am delighted to hear you say that. I beg you to remember it when you next talk of "Hofmann's experiments." It is possible that flesh-eating, like cannibalism, is "not expedient," when it is regarded from a wider standpoint than that of the chemical doctrinaire. Nothing, indeed, could be more _un_scientific than the attitude taken on this question by "scientists" of the Andrew Wilson type. For, in the first place, as pointed out above, it is impossible to arrive at any scientific conclusion as to the comparative digestibility of vegetable and animal foods unless the conditions are equal—that is, unless the persons experimented on are equally accustomed to the food-stuffs they are invited to digest; and, secondly, there is the question of the quality of the foods supplied, for as Dr. Oldfield has remarked, "it is quite as unfair to judge of the digestibility of the proteid of the vegetable kingdom from one example of the legumens as it would be to class all forms of flesh as indigestible because veal or lobster happens to be so." Against the academic testimony of the Hofmann school of specialists we may confidently set that of so distinguished a practical chemist as Sir B. W. Richardson, who, by his personal knowledge of vegetarians and vegetarianism, was peculiarly qualified to judge. "From experimental observations which I have made, I am of opinion that the vegetable flesh-forming substances may be as easily digested, when they are presented to the stomach in proper form, as are the animal substances of like feeding quality."[27] Footnote 27: "Foods of Man."