The diets of the various nations have so frequently been summarised and presented by writers upon this subject that it will not be necessary for me to do more than to mention briefly a few of the most essential points; and to refer the reader to those works in which these facts and arguments are to be found in full. Dr Graham, in his “Science of Human Life”; Dr John Smith, in his “Fruit and Farinacea”; Dr Anna Kingsford, in her “Perfect Way in Diet,” and, more recently and fully, the Hon. Rollo Russell, in his extensive volume, “Strength and Diet: A practical treatise with special regard to the life of nations”—all these writers have discussed this question of national health, as compared with national diet, and found, almost invariably, that in every nation whose diet consisted almost exclusively or even largely of meat, the natives were small in stature, depraved mentally and morally, and afflicted with diverse diseases; whereas those nations which were largely vegetarian did not suffer in the same way from the sicknesses and pestilences that affected their fellow-men; but were, on the contrary, more forceful, superior morally and mentally, and in every way higher in the scale of evolution than those nations which subsisted largely upon meat. A striking example of this is to be found in the pigmy races of Central Africa. In his work, “The Pigmies,” Professor A. de Quatrefages has shown us that this miniature people, stunted as they are, mentally, physically and morally, subsist almost entirely upon meat. He says: “The Mincopies are exclusively hunters and fishermen, living upon the shore of a sea filled with fishes, close to great forests where boars run at large, and which furnish them, besides, honey and nuts, they have not felt the necessity of wringing by labour from the soil, a supplement to their food supply; and this very luxuriance of food, perhaps, has been of influence in keeping them at the lowest point in the social scale. Francis Day informs us that a very small tribe of Mincopies camped near the English establishments, and receiving daily rations, took besides, in a single year, five hundred boars, one hundred and fifty turtles, twenty wild cats, fifty guianas and six bugongs.... All the descriptions agree in attributing to the Akkas, men and women, an extreme abdominal development, which causes the adults to resemble the children of Arabs and negroes.... But it is evident the abnormal development of the abdomen, among the Akkas, is not a true race characteristic, but that it is largely due to their manner of life, the quantity of their food, perhaps also to the general conditions of their habitat. This fact results from some observations of Count Minis Calchi, who has seen, after some weeks of regular and wholesome diet, the extreme development of the abdomen disappear, and the vertebral column resume its normal state.”