vegetable elements, will resist this decomposing action for a much larger period, yet it will in the end putrefy with all the phenomena of that formed from flesh meat.” The bearing of these facts on physical training, the health of the body, and the decomposition of the body after death, need only be pointed out. It is really extraordinary how writers on dietetics, seem to take a delight, as a rule, in making as many mis-statements and misrepresentations as possible. Take, for example, the following passage in Dr C. S. Read’s Book, “Fads and Feeding”:— “It is necessary, with the vegetable products, to take the nitrogenous product as Nature gives it to us, which is a drawback; and secondly, vegetable foods are relatively much poorer in this respect than animal foods.... A vegetable diet must needs be bulky, because of its wateriness, especially when cooked, and the large amount of indigestible matter it contains. This tends to abnormally distend the stomach and bowels. The capacity of the stomach becomes greater, more food can be taken, but the distention produces a feeling of satiety before sufficient nourishment has really been ingested. The dealing with such a bulk internally means the expenditure of much nervous energy which might have been better utilised. The wateriness of vegetable foods is extremely disadvantageous, since on absorption it tends to render all the tissues flabby. The individual who leads a sedentary life will feel the disadvantage of vegetarianism more than the active worker.” Now, not a sentence in the above quotation is correct. If Dr Read had studied vegetarians at first hand, he would have found out his mistakes, and would not have written such rubbish. As a matter of fact, vegetable foods _do not_ supply less nitrogen than meat, but on the contrary more; a vegetable diet _need not_ be bulky, if properly selected—_less_ of it need be eaten than of a mixed diet, because of its greater nutritive value; while the notion that the absorbtion of water from the foods make the tissues “flabby” is, of course, absurd. Altogether, this is almost the greatest string of inaccuracies regarding diet that I have ever come across. There is one aspect of this question which it might be well to touch upon in this place. The air that we breathe, as we know, contains a large percentage of nitrogen. Might it not be possible for the system to utilise some of this nitrogen, when the body is in a state of nitrogen starvation? Dr De Lacy Evans, surgeon to St Saviour’s Hospital, in London, contended that this might be the case, and in his “How to Prolong Life,” pp. 76-80, wrote: