But there is another argument in favour of the vegetarian diet, and more especially in favour of the fruitarian diet, as against meat-eating. It is that any given area of land will supply far more food per acre in the one case than in the other. When the soil is given up to the feeding of cattle, upon which man is to feed, the given area of land would supply far less nutriment, so to speak, than would the same soil, if grains were raised upon it; and that would give less, in turn, than if fruit-trees were grown upon it. Dr Smith pointed out this fact in his “Fruits and Farinacea” years ago; and stated that twenty times the population could be supported upon a diet of grains, coming from a given limited area, than could be supplied, if that area were devoted to the raising of cattle. And far more would this be the case if fruits were grown upon this same area. It is safe to say that, if one person could be fed from a certain area of land, provided he ate the meat it produced, ten could be fed from the same area, upon grains and cereals, and twenty upon the fruits and nuts such an area could provide. This fact is in itself of great importance and significance. Although the time is doubtless far distant when man will have to figure so closely on his land space for feeding the people, that time must come some day; and it would be well to know that many more persons can be fed from the same area of ground upon one diet than upon another. These and many other arguments could be urged against the practice of meat-eating. They are all valid arguments, though all of them, in my estimation, subordinate to the hygienic argument. If it were necessary to kill animals, in order to live, I should have no compunction in doing so; but as it is not necessary, I must protest against this useless waste of life; and more especially so since this meat is positively pernicious and harmful to the system. There is a sort of half-formulated idea in men’s minds that they must have meat, because the blood is _red_, and because the blood of their own bodies is red; and they think that, by eating large quantities of meat, they can increase the quantity and improve the quality of their own blood—thereby curing anæmia, etc.! Of course there is no foundation at all for this superstition. In the first place, the tables of the chemical values of the various foods show us conclusively that meat is far _less_ nutritious than many other articles of diet; while it contains, in addition, certain poisons which are extremely harmful to the system. Further, all food, no matter what its nature, is converted into a creamy substance known as chyle before it is appropriated by the system; and, no matter what the food may be, it is resolved into this cream-coloured chyle before it is digested. Where, then, is the “good, red blood” of the meat? And I have previously shown that, although there are practically no chemical differences between the chyme formed