Pliny distinguishes five different species of promegranate;[XIV-45] Columella teaches the way to rear this tree;[XIV-46] and Apicius treats of the preservation of its fruit, to do which it is only necessary to plunge it in boiling water, take it out immediately, and suspend it from the ceiling.[XIV-47] The Greeks were very fond of pomegranates. The finest came from Attica, so celebrated by the genius of its inhabitants; and from Bœotia,[XIV-48] that privileged soil, where agriculture and stupidity flourished together.[XIV-49] XV. ANIMAL FOOD. Bread, vegetables, and fruit for a long time provided man with a sufficient and easy alimentation.[XV-1] Wandering with his flocks in search of cool pasture, he only exacted their wool wherewith to make the clothing requisite for his migratory life;[XV-2] their services to assist him in hollowing a difficult furrow;[XV-3] and their first-born as a most agreeable offering to the all-powerful master of heaven and earth.[XV-4] We may also suppose that, in the pastoral ages, the wandering tribes of Asia added to their vegetable food the milk of their ewes, goats, or cows, although it is not mentioned in the Book of Genesis[XV-5] at a very early period, it is true, but which forms a nourishment nature seems to point out as proper to infancy and old age;[XV-6] mankind, therefore, abstained from animal food during many centuries.[XV-7] Ecclesiastical and profane writers seem to agree on this point.[XV-8] Habit had not yet produced disgust, and curiosity, the fatal mother of experience and sensuality. To eat was for them the most natural and simple action of life. The art of cookery tries, makes choice, and improves: that art did not exist. The frightful cataclysm which overthrew the world, and of which the history of every nation gives proofs more or less confused, came to modify this state of things. “Men were obliged to be fed with more substantial food,”[XV-9] and our forefathers were allowed to add to vegetables and the herbs of the country, “animated beings, and all that which had life and motion.”[XV-10] The magiric science, therefore, began in the year of the world 1656. From that period, indeed, the cooking of meat, however little complicated it may have been, required an attention, care, and study, which prepared the development of that marvellous faculty to which no possible limit can be assigned--the last to disappear, and to which, in fact, are related nearly all the actions of human life--_the sense of taste_. Heathen authors, guided by the lights of reason, some gleams of tradition, and perhaps not absolutely strangers to the writings of Moses, agree pretty well on the diet of the Golden Age;[XV-11] that age of innocence, acorns, and happiness,[XV-12] when everywhere were seen streams of milk, and nectar, and honey, flowing from the hollow oaks and other trees of the forests.[XV-13]