Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ers, ) and herbivorous (herb or grass-eaters, ) and granivorus (seed or grain-eaters.) But as for man, he may be termed omnivorous (an all-eater;) in which privilege no creature more shares with him than the hog. They, who judge by the teeth of an animal what food is most suitable to him, find, that man partakes of all the three classes above mentioned; for he has cutting teeth, piercing teeth, and grinders, and can equally manage food of a soft and a hard texture. Vegetable food is that, which, in most countries, constitutes the greater part of man’s sustenance. It is nearest at hand, procurable in greatest quantity, and with most certainty; and upon the whole, is the wholesomest. Of vegetables, by which I mean all kinds of plants, the earth is full, and the varieties of them seem to be endless. Almost all of them are food to some animals, and many more than is commonly imagined might be made to yield food to man. Different as they appear, the proper matter of food which they contain, is nearly the same in many species, and may be classed under a few heads. That vegetable subsistance, which is thechief matter of human aliment, and is found in the greater number of the articles commonly used for food, is called the farinaceous, from farina, the Latin word for meal. This, in its separate state, is white, powdery, of little taste or smell, capable of swelling with water and thickening it, and of being kneaded or worked into cakes. It contains a part called starch, which will dissolve in water, and make a jelly with it, as you have doubtless seen in the laundry; but this starchy part is not only useful to stiffen linen, but is that in which the nourishment of the meal chiefly consists. There is scarcely any vegetable which does not contain farinaceous matter in some part of it; …
