The true function of the chemist in his general relation to the diet question is to help the coming dietary by transferring to the vegetarian system some of the scientific attention that has hitherto been solely devoted to flesh meats. "Men of practical science," says Sir B. W. Richardson, "ought to be at work assisting with their skill in bringing about that mighty reformation. We now know to a nicety the relation of the various parts of food needed for the construction of the living body, and there should be no difficulty, except the labour of research, in so modifying food from its prime source as to make it applicable to every necessity without the assistance of any intermediate animal at all." Why should not the chemist, instead of maintaining, like Mrs. Partington, a pettifogging and quite futile opposition to the flowing tide, put himself in the current of progress, and try to turn his special knowledge to the furtherance of a noble end? CONDITIONS OF CLIMATE To try to "change the venue" is sometimes the policy of defendants in an action at law, and a similar device is adopted by those who would stave off the hearing of the vegetarian case. "The tropics" are the convenient limbo to which this uncongenial subject is most frequently consigned; and it is with a proud sense of humour and self-assurance that the British Islander, who objects to alien immigration and all foreign frivolities, warns the vegetarian heresy to keep clear of his inhospitable clime. Such diet may be all very well, he thinks, for passive Hindoos, but not for the hard-working inhabitants of this temperate zone. BRITISH ISLANDER: Vegetarianism? No thank you; not _here_! All very nice in Africa and India, I dare say, where you can sit all day under a palm-tree and eat dates. VEGETARIAN: But I have not observed that when you visit Africa or India you practise vegetarianism. On the contrary, you take your flesh-pots with you everywhere—even to the very places where you admit you don't need them, and where, as in India, they give the greatest offence to the inhabitants. BRITISH ISLANDER: Oh, well, it's no affair of theirs, is it, if I take my roast beef? VEGETARIAN: Yet you think it your affair to interfere with the cannibals when they take their roast man. And have you observed that it is in the tropical zone, not the temperate zone, that cannibalism is most rife? BRITISH ISLANDER: Why do you remind me of that? VEGETARIAN: To show you that all this talk about vegetarianism being "a matter of climate" is pure humbug. The use of flesh is a vicious habit everywhere, and nowhere a necessity, except where other food is not procurable. BRITISH ISLANDER: But do we not need more oil and fat in northern climates? VEGETARIAN: Undoubtedly; but these can be readily obtained without recourse to flesh.