“In the early spring,” says Dr Dodds, in her “Health in the Household,” p. 40, “when we have grown tired of ‘last year’s leavings,’ the tender vegetables fill our markets, and delight our eyes in glad anticipation of a change in the repast. The young beets, the spinach, and asparagus, the early cauliflower, and even the lettuce and onions have charms for us then. As summer draws nigh, the varieties of choice vegetables multiply, giving us green peas, tomatoes, string beans, summer squashes, and an almost endless variety of products. Then come the autumn days, and with them the great lima beans, the hubbard squashes, and the sweet potatoes. Nor does the supply fail us when winter approaches; there are still turnips, potatoes, cabbage, winter squashes, and other good things. Really it is little less than wonderful what varieties of vegetable products there are even in a single latitude of climate.” Although vegetables are capable of supporting life, and contain many of the nutritious properties most necessary for bodily sustenance, there are, nevertheless, objections to be raised against almost every one of these foods. Personally, I do not believe that they are suitable articles of diet for the human race. When we come to the chapter on the fruitarian diet, I shall endeavour to show that fruits and nuts in their uncooked, primitive form, are the suitable and proper diet for mankind; and I believe that, although he can subsist upon vegetables, and even maintain a certain degree of health upon the ordinary vegetarian diet, I do not think that it begins to compare in excellence with the fruitarian or raw-food diet. Throughout this book, I have been used to speaking of “vegetarian” as opposed to a “mixed” diet—including meat—and I certainly think it preferable to that generally followed; but the diet I would advocate is as far superior to the ordinary vegetarian diet as _that_ is superior to the mixed diet. It consists almost exclusively of fruits and nuts. The fruitarian diet, then, is, in my estimation, the ideal diet, and the reasons for this I shall endeavour to give in full in Chapter XII.