The latter too has another peculiarity.  Fish contains a large quantity of phosphorus and hydrogen, that is to say of the two most combustible things in nature.  Fish therefore is a most heating diet.  This might legitimate the praise once bestowed on certain religious orders, the regime of whom was directly opposed to the commonly esteemed most fragile.

Individual instance.

I will say no more on this physiological fact, but will not omit an instance which may be easily verified.

Some years ago I went to a country house, in the vicinity of Paris, and on the Seine, near St. Denis, near a hamlet composed chiefly of fishing huts.  I was amazed at the crowd of huts I saw swarming in the road.

I remarked it with amazement to the boatman who took me across the river.

“Monsieur,” said he, “we have eight families here, have fifty-three children, among whom are forty-nine girls and four boys.  That one is mine.”  As he spoke he pointed triumphantly to a little whelp, of about five years of age, who was at the bow of the boat eating raw craw-fish.

From this observation I made ten years ago, and others I could easily recall, I have been led to think that the genesiac sense is moved by fish-eating, and that it is rather irritating than plethoric and substantial.  I am inclined to maintain this opinion the more, because Doctor Bailly has recently proved, by many instances, that when ever the number of female children exceeds the male, the circumstance is due to some debilitating circumstances.  This will account to us for the jests made from the beginning of time, whenever a man’s wife bears him a daughter instead of a son.

I might say much about aliments considered as a tout ensemble, and about the various modifications they undergo by mixing, etc.; I hope, though, that the preceding will suffice to the majority of readers.  I recommend all others to read some book ex professo, and will end with the things which are not without interest.

The first is that animalization is affected almost as vegetation is, that is that the reparative current formed by digestion, is inhaled in various manners by the tubes with which the organs are provided, and becomes flesh, nails, hair, precisely as earth, watered by the same fluid, becomes radish, lettuce, potato,—­as the gardener pleases.

The second is that in the organization of life, the same elements which chemistry produces are not obtained.  The organs destined to produce life and motion only act on what is subjected to them.

Nature, however, loves to wrap herself in veils, and to stop us at every advance, and has concealed the laboratory where new transformations are affected.  It is difficult to explain how, having determined that the human body contained lime, sulphur, and phosphorous iron, and the other substances, all this can be renewed every ten years by bread and water.