that the latter survived the former, and proved capable of being brought into a condition of normal health by a renewal of their ordinary regimen. At the same time other dogs lived contentedly on the refuse meat exhausted of its essence, but sprinkled with common salt to replace the alkaline salts which had been withdrawn. Many fairly authenticated cases attest that no aqueous infusion of meat can alone provide all the necessary elements of nutrition, and that we are not as yet rendered independent of our customary supplies of animal food, by any chemical process. and sugar, with the alkaline salts so in- It is not as generally known as it deserves to be, how large is the share which oil, of animal, and still more of vegetable origin, takes in the nourishing of the great majority of our fellow-creatures. The globe-fish, which is an absolute reservoir of oil, does the same service to the Indians of North-Western America, that the seal does to the Greenlander, in enabling them to support the severity of the long winter; while the tunny and the eel yield an unctuous food to the Neapolitan, and the negro ekes out his scanty store of flesh with the produce of the groundnut, and the Shea-butter tree. The dinner of a Maltese peasant family consists of slices of bread steeped in the fresh oil of the olive; while in Spain, Portugal, and the South of France, onions and raw garlic, the latter of which is remarkably rich in the essential oils to which it owes its punThe French soldier's rations have of late gency, are found to allay the hunger of a been slightly increased, but for many years frugal and abstemious population, rarely they remained fixed at a standard, which | well supplied either with dairy produce or was adopted as one fit to maintain the men with meat. Wherever there is a warm at the average rate of health and strength climate and an abundant vegetation, it will to be found among the French peasantry. be found that oil in some form or other Half a pound, or, in rough numbers, eight enters largely into the popular bill of and a half ounces of beef, with vegetables, fare, and that by its aid the natives are furnish the soldier with the two meals of enabled to reconcile themselves to priva- soup and bouilli which represent his breaktions which would be otherwise insupport- fast and dinner, and which, with a pound able. Sugar, starch, oil, and fat, are all, and a half-or, say, about twenty-seven however, heat-producing substances, of un- ounces-of bread, constitutes his whole deniable merit in their degree, but not sustenance. This dietary compares unsufficing as single and permanent sources favourably with that of the English pri of nutrition. The same may be said of vate, with his twelve ounces of meat; but gelatine, and the injurious effects of a diet since the time of Louvois the French army on which it is often attempted to nourish has been, theoretically at least, managed children or elderly invalids-jelly, arrow-on principles of strict economy. To young root, sago, and other aliments of a similar kind-are but too well known to every experienced physician. For thorough and perfect nutrition the elementary substances should beyond doubt all be present in their fitting proportionsgluten and gelatine, fat and fibrine, starch men of the poorest class and from the poorest districts, such as Poitou, the Landes, or Dauphiny, this nourishment represents comparative abundance. The youth who, from infancy, has been better used to chestnuts than to bread, or whose ordinary dinner has consisted of rye-meal porridge, as in the Sologne, or of cabbage-soup, as in Morbihan, is contented with his treatment beneath the colours; while the sturdy French-Fleming, or large-limbed Norman, finds it hard to reconcile himself to the pittance granted by the state. Yet, as a rule, the health of the troops maintains itself at a fair average, when contrasted with that of the civil population in time of peace, while that of the Prussian privates (whose bread-ration is smaller than that of the French, but with whom the deficiency is supplied by a larger weight of potatoes) is considerably above that of the rest of the people of the country. There are theorists who maintain that brain-work exacts a more liberal diet than that which will suffice to sustain the health of those whose exertions are wholly muscular. This proposition is often disputed, on the ground that some of the leading thinkers, both of antiquity and of modern times, have been not merely abstemious, but even ascetic in their habits. In such a case as this, it is obvious that no general rule can safely be laid down. Some of the foremost leaders of civilised opinion, some of the mighty workers, whose names shine the brightest on the roll of fame, have led lives which would be popularly considered as severely self-denying. Others, no less renowned, have used, and in some instances notoriously abused, what our forefathers were accustomed to call the pleasures of the table. It would, however, be illogical and absurd to argue that the energy which impresses itself upon the world, or the genius that dazzles contemporary eyes, is a consequence either of the frugality or the luxuriousness of the individual in whom it is conspicuous. Many dull people of both sexes eat of the fat and drink of the strong without any remarkable reason or result, and a much larger number lead lives of enforced abstinence, that nevertheless effect nothing towards the development of the intellect. Precisely as the habit of continuous manual labour enables human beings to subsist on a moderate amount of food, from which nature, thus stimulated, contrives to extract all the available pabulum, so does physical inaction occasion contradictory phenomena in the constitution. It may appear paradoxical to assert that the idle need, or at least crave for, a greater bulk and weight of food, and a larger variety of aliments, than the industrious; but the experience of every day tells us that this is the case. It has been found necessary to concede a better supply of food, not only to the insane patients in asylums, but to criminals in prison, than that which would suffice to maintain them when at liberty. Convalescents in a well-managed hospital recover in direct proportion to the liberality with which they are fed, and, in spite of the proverbial parsimony of workhouse authorities, it has been found practically imperative to grant to paupers a diet somewhat more nutritious than that of the class from which they are chiefly recruited. A besieged garrison, passively cooped up in a blockaded fortress, feels the pangs of hunger to a far greater extent than does an army compelled to march and fight on insufficient nutriment. It has long been known that deep grief, and, indeed, any passion which exhausts the nervous system, promotes a craving for food which frequently appears inappropriate and unnatural in the eyes of non-scientific spectators, while, on the other hand, extreme muscular exertion often indisposes both men and animals for partaking of solid sustenance. Gum, starch, sugar, and the many gelatinous and saccharine substances supplied by the vegetable kingdom, slight as is their power of contributing to genuine nutrition, possess the valuable property of deferring, so to speak, the assaults of hunger due to the wasting of the tissues, and of enabling life to be provisionally supported in the absence of azotised or stimulating food. The early traders on the Guinea Coast were astonished at the strange endurance displayed by the Ashantee scouts, who in war-time were accustomed to perch themselves among the highest branches of some lofty tree, and to remain, for days together, on the watch for the movements of an enemy, wholly, as it appeared, without nourishment. At last it was discovered, that the negro spies carried with them some rude lozenges of a reddish gum, native to the forests, and that on these, and on a little water contained in a calabash slung to the girdle, they could subsist uncomplainingly for a considerable time, but with a perceptible diminution of weight and strength. The use of pemmican among the Indians of North-Western America, and that of pellets of lime and albumen among the Texan hunters, is well known, and it is probable that the earth-eating propensities of the natives of Guiana and Venezuela arose from a similar wish to deaden the throes of famine; while the black alluvial soil deposited by the rivers of South America, singularly rich in undecomposed organic matter, might actually yield some modicum of nutriment. The morbid taste for earth-eating peculiar to negroes on the African coast, and which, when once acquired, is said to be a habit as pernicious and as difficult of cure as dipsomania itself, may possibly have had a similar origin. The vexed question, as to whether alcohol ought or ought not to be regarded as food, has been already elaborately and almost exhaustively discussed. But, at any rate, the enemies of alcohol, while denying it all nutritive properties, have never attempted to deny the stimulating effects which have rendered it popular, or the remarkable power, as a supplement or substitute for solid food, which it unquestionably possesses. That it cannot be so employed without serious injury to health, by no means disproves the existence of this quality, which it shares, however, with other stimulants and narcotics, not merely with opium and the juice of the Indian hemp, but with nicotine, with the active principle of tea and coffee, and with the essence of cocoa. A Peruvian peon who has once imbibed the fatal liking for the chewed leaves of the cacao tree, is regarded as presenting as hopeless a case as that of the confirmed dram-drinker of Europe, or the opium-smoker of China. Yet cacaoine, like the bhang of the Oriental Mussulman, or the arsenic of the Styrian mountaineer, during the earlier stages of its influence, appears to treat its victims more mildly than is the case with ardent spirits or morphine. It gives, or rather lends for a time, and at a fearful and usurious rate of interest, extraordinary vigour, speed, and sprightliness; and it is but gradually, and as the appetite for wholesome nourishment dies away, that the serviceable slave becomes the imperious taskmaster, demanding the slow sacrifice of health, strength, intellect, and life itself. On passing in review the various alimentary staples on which the different branches of the human family subsist, it becomes obvious that nitrogen, whencesoever derived, is the element of nutrition that is the most instinctively and persistently sought for, and without which the remainder afford but an insipid and unsatisfying diet. Now, we can easily produce an article of food that shall be almost, or absolutely, deficient in nitrogen, but it would be impossible to discover any alimentary substance that should exclude hydrogen and carbon, while including azote. A poorly- nourished population, depending, it may be supposed, according to latitude and national customs, on the potato, on rice, or on the gourds, melons, and other watery cucurbitous plants, cannot yet afford entirely to dispense with nitrogen in its daily sustenance. It will therefore be found that in those countries where bread is beyond the reach of the poorer classes, and where flesh-meat is regarded by them as an unattainable luxury, the deficiency is in part made up by milk, butter, cheese, or some oil, which, like dairy produce in general, contains a large percentage of nitrogen. The bean, the mushroom, and other highly nitrogenised vegetables, are of infinite value in this respect; while the large amount of gluten which wheat contains enables a wheat-fed people to be comparatively independent of animal food, at least in its most concentrated form. The effects of the imagination on the human appetite are well known, as is the truth that food which is palatable, and therefore relished, is the most likely to conduce to healthful nutrition, and it is thus an advantage that civilisation and commerce have enabled most nations to vary their diet at will, and to make it embrace many flavours and materials which in a ruder state of society were unknown. Still, however, the same problem continually presents itself, both to savage and to civilised man, how most conveniently to provide for each day's recurring wants; and this can never be satisfactorily solved by any regimen which does not include, in at least an approximately adequate proportion, the above-mentioned essentials of nutrition. VOX NATURÆ. Low heard the river-reeds among The wind responds with whisper'd sigù, Till branch with branch is interlock'd, To probe the purport of the breeze, When gone a-wooing 'mong the trees? Doth leaf with leaf a converse hold, When storms, we think, the woods o'erwhelm. Such fancies stir the dreaming mood Amid her mysteries divine; And shape the changes of the cload. JOHN BULL IN THE CHINA SHOP. IN TWO PARTS. PART I. I DON'T propose to discuss at length the events which led to the rise and progress of the present extraordinary mania for pottery, although the enemies of Cole, C.B., are never tired of decrying the expenditure of national money on crockery-ware for South Kensington; and the excellent Registrar of the Royal School of Mines, after surveying his neat and instructive collection, beats his breast, and proclaims himself a sinner in having aided to encourage the prevailing epidemic. Both of these gentlemen may console themselves with the reflection that, even as there were strong men before Agamemnon, so were there ceramanias before the present outbreak. Through the reigns of buxom Mary and her successor, 66 mighty Anna," a rage for crockery seized upon all persons pretending to wit and fashion. Chinese and Japanese monsters fetched fabulous prices, and the famous definition of a perfectly well-bred woman-"mistress of herself, though China fall"-points distinctly to the estimation in which curious Oriental china was held. It does not appear that at the Queen Anne period, the artistic triumphs of Italian and French artists found much favour in the eyes of persons of quality, who loved blue Japanese dogs and grinning dragons, far better than what was then loosely classed as Rafaelle-ware. Perhaps the taste of the period, except so far as literature was concerned, inclined towards the grotesque rather than the symmetrical. Araminta and Belinda rejoiced in negro pages, petted monkeys, and treasured the hideous fancies of Oriental ceramists. The recent revival, although responsible for an infusion of Japanese style into art, is yet due to a higher appreciation of the beautiful than that exhibited by our ancestors of a century and a-half ago. The extreme importance of elegant form, in the productions of the potter, has been so persistently and eloquently insisted on, that some indistinct idea, that a hideous outline cannot be atoned for by any splendour of material, has taken possession of the public mind. No doctrine could be sounder than this, and it is curious to observe, in taking a hurried survey of the great centres of porcelain manufacture, that, with all minute attention to detail, the one important element of true form has, in western countries, rarely been neglected. To the collector, however, mere beauty is often subservient to rarity, ing a certain highly prized texture or and a specimen of a peculiar paste, exhibitcolour, and duly marked with the monogram of the artist and the manufactory, will possess for him a curious, and, to the uninitiated, an extraordinary value. Without plunging into speculations concerning the pottery of pre-historic times, and without pausing to consider whether the first potter was one who, walking upon clayey soil moistened by inundations or rain, first observed that the earth retained the print of his footsteps, or was rather the cunning savage who first strengthened his calabash with a covering of clay, and communicated to early pottery an outline never since lost-it may yet be well to mention that the art of the potter is as honourable as it is ancient, and as beautiful as it is interesting. From vases constructed to hold the ashes of the illustrious dead, we gather curious particulars of their mode of living, and by the area over which relics of ancient pottery are found, can trace the limits of antique empires. Ancient Greece has left a clearly defined map of its extent, its colonies and conquests, in vast quantities of funereal pottery; and the utmost limits attained by the god Terminus are written in the remains of Roman cups and vases. Ceramic art, perhaps more than any other, has enlisted the good-will of monarchs. By granting high premiums, and often by less gentle methods, the Chinese emperors promoted the manufacture of the famous egg-shell porcelain. Chinese ceramic history is not without a martyr, since canonised and worshipped as the patron saint of potters. Pousa, whose little corpulent figure is often met with in collections, was a working potter sorely vexed by the command of the emperor to produce an effect in porcelain, till then deemed impossible. Remonstrances produced no effect upon the brother of the Sun and Moon, who only became more obstinate with each succes sive failure of his servants. Finally the mandarin charged with the execution of the emperor's commands called the manufacturers and the workmen together, and administered the bastinado all round to quicken their inventive faculties. Some slight improvement resulted from this vigorous action, but success not yet being attained, the mandarin kept the bastinado going briskly. The workmen, sore in body and in mind, at last gave way to despair, and one of them, named Pousa, to escape further ill-usage, sprang into the furnace and was immediately consumed. When the firing was completed the furnace was opened, and the porcelain was found perfect, and just as the emperor desired it, and Pousa-the martyr - was appeased by divine honours. pearl. The application of this word to china-ware is probably due to the Portuguese. "Porcellana" is the word which they apply to cowrie shells, and was transferred to the translucent ware, either on account of a certain similarity in appearance, or, as is more probable, from a belief that china was made from the shells themselves. Edoardo Barbosa, who died in 1576, says it was made from marine shells and egg shells buried in the earth for eighty or a hundred years; and this belief was entertained by Jerome Cardan and Scaliger. M.Jacquemart gives what Guido Pancirolli or Pancirollus wrote in Latin"Past centuries have not seen porcelains, which are merely a certain mass, comIn Europe the Dukes of Urbino fostered posed of plaster, eggs, scales of marine by their patronage the production of the locusts, and other similar kinds, which beautiful majolica. Henry the Second of mass, being well united and worked toFrance and his wife Catherine de' Medici gether, is secretly hidden underground by protected Palissy from the zeal of their the father of a family, who informs his own followers, and helped much to develope children alone of it, and it remains there his genius. In the case of the true porce- eighty years without seeing daylight; lain manufacturers of Europe, the effect of after which his heirs, drawing it out and patronage was even more distinct, for the finding it suitably adapted for some kind art was only introduced in the beginning of work, make out of it those precious of the eighteenth century, and in less than transparent vases, so beautiful to the sight fifty years' time rose to its greatest per- in form and colour, that architects find fection. Augustus the Strong, Maria nothing in them to improve upon. Their Theresa, Frederic the Great, Catherine of virtues are admirable, inasmuch as if one Russia, and Madame de Pompadour took a puts poison into one of these vessels, it keen interest in the new art, and "Butcher" breaks immediately. He who once buries Cumberland supported the famous esta- this material never recovers it, but leaves blishment at Chelsea, which, at the death it to his children, descendants, or heirs, as of its patron, was abandoned for want of a rich treasure, on account of the profits encouragement. Not even Wedgwood they derive from it; and it is of far higher escaped royal patronage his newly-in-price than gold, inasmuch as one rarely vented earthenware having been intro- finds any of the true material, and much duced under the patronage of Queen that is sold is unreal." Charlotte. To avoid confusion, it may be well to state the difference between pottery and porcelain properly so called. As already mentioned, the manufacture of porcelain was unknown in Europe previous to the last century, but has probably been practised in China for about two thousand years. Porcelain differs from pottery in possessing a beautiful translucency, and may be regarded as an intermediate substance between pottery and glass-some specimens, indeed, as those of early Chelsea, are little better than semi-opaque glass. The name "pourcelaine" sufficiently indicates this quality. Existing in the French language long before the introduction of china to Europe "pourcelaine" was applied to that beautiful lining of marine shells, called by us mother-of "Porcelain," according to Marryatt's definition, "is composed of two substances the one fusible, which produces its transparency; the other infusible, which gives it the property of sustaining without melting the heat necessary to vitrify the fusible substance. The infusible ingredient consists of alumina or clay called Kao-lin; the fusible is composed of felspar or petrosilex, and is styled Pe-tun-tse. These two materials correspond almost exactly with the china clay and china stone of which such huge quantities are exported yearly from Cornwall. Kao-lin being discovered in 1769 at St. Yrieix, near Limoges, Sèvres at once produced fine porcelain; and a similar effect followed its detection at Meissen, where what is called Dresden china was first made. One John Schnorr, an iron master, riding near Aul, observed |