It was from the pages of THE VEGETARIAN AND OUR FELLOW CREATURES that I received the lasting impression to dispense with meat as a portion of my diet, also the courage to carry out my convictions. This thought has been steadily coming to the fore out of the subconscious mind for many months, yea years, but the bud did not burst into full bloom until the receipt of this valuable little journal.

I had dispensed with breakfasts three years before, which silent influence encouraged my son to do the same. I never insisted nor even suggested his doing sohe took it up from mental suggestion, as he is very sensitive to surrounding influences. Since he has had no sick headaches, while before they very materially interfered with his school duties and brain action.

We dispensed also with coffee, as it gradually proved too stimulating to our sensitive nerves. We substituted a cereal coffee for which we had to cultivate a liking, but succeeded and soon grew to be very fond of it.

Upon reading THE VEGETARIAN last spring I dropped off meat. After a time my son concluded to try doing without, just as a test. Soon the young man who boards with us joined him. I did not ask them to do so, nor even hinted that they should, but religiously provided meat

for them. Experience proves conclusively that coercion does harm.

After both acceded to my ideas, I explained to them that they would gain in weight. It is now seven weeks since their reform. The friend has gained seven pounds and my son three pounds.

As to religion: I am and have been for years a christian mental scientist. I twelve years ago healed myself of a disease through the practice of the science after physicians had given me over to die. These experiences led me into many researches and advanced ideas.

Being of a sympathetic nature the killing of animals for food seemed gross and beneath the plane of mentality I had attained to. I go further than mental scientists are now claiming and say-our superior will and soul power should hold us above that of the ravenous animal which thirsts for blood, and at best equal to that of the "beasts of burden."

Instead of condemning we should join. the Hindoos in their practice. If we ever hope to realize eternal life in the flesh as Jesus realized would be done, we must cease slaughter, not alone as a race, but the whole planet.

I realize the reason it becomes possible for the Hindoo priests to lay aside their bodies for a season was because the whole people joined them in the essential beliefs

and formed so strong a wall of thought force that the surrounding unbelief could not break through.

Another fact I would impress upon those who may chance to read this: The appetite is lessened by the absence of meat, not enfeebled, but made smaller. We three are proving it. We enjoy our food but are satisfied with less. Besides we do not get ravenously hungry as we did while eating meat. Even a few bites of flesh will create a craving that is entirely absent while none is in the stomach.

I particularly recommend no meat nor nuts for those who wish to become released of over-obesity, and equally for most those who are unusually thin.

Milk, eggs, cheese and butter supply enough animal food for human spiritual beings; indeed, they should be equal to doing without even these.

A FARM WHERE COWS ARE NOT BRED TO KILL.

To the Editor: I inclose renewal for 1902. The December number contained some very good articles. "Pertinent Queries," by Hortense Malcolm Phelps was especially fine, and ought to be read by everyone who thinks it necessary to kill innocent animals and eat them in order to be happy and healthy. As the lady truly remarks, "It is rather an old barbarian custom handed down from dark ages." I have started on my ninth year as a vegetarian, and feel more convinced than ever as the days and weeks roll by that it is the best way to live. I work on a farm where no creatures are forced into existence and murdered for the purpose of gratifying a perverted appetite. It is a great delight to me to know that I can do more work on honest food than

when I made a walking cemetery of myself. I leave no opportunity pass in letting people know what a delusion it is to dine on flesh but rather on "Eden's diet pure"-cereals, vegetables, fruits and nuts -both by precept and example.

CHAUNCEY ROE.

WILL CURE DRUNKENNESS.

"It is impossible for a drunkard to eat unbolted wheatmeal bread, vegetables, and uncooked fruits-such as the apple, plum, or apricot-and nothing else, for six months, without having the desire for liquor substantially die in him. The simplicity of such a diet is thoroughly restorative and completely effectual to overcome his longing for liquor."-Dr. Jackson.

"Mr. H. B. Fowler, who has studied and lectured on dipsomania for forty years, declares that the use of flesh-foods, by the excitation which it exercises on the nervous system, prepares the way for habits of intemperance in drink; and other things being equal, the more flesh consumed, the more serious is the danger of confirmed alcoholism. Many experienced physicians have made similar observations, and wisely act on them in their treatment of dipsomaniacs."-Dr. A. Kingsford.

ONE-FIFTH DISEASED.

"One-fifth of the total amount of meat consumed is derived from animals killed in a state of malignant or chronic disease."-Professor Gamgee, Fifth Report to the Privy Council.

PRE-HISTORIC MAN.

"Our normal type dates from the period when the digestive organs of our frugivorous ancestors adapted themselves to such food; a period compared with whose duration the age of grist mills and made dishes is but of yesterday." The importance of this and the conclusions derivable therefrom are too seldom thought of. Evidence accumulates that man with his perfected anatomy has trod the earth untold chiliads, and that not evolution but cataclysm caused his change of food from fruit to flesh with "made dishes" to hide the taint of death.

When first partaken of what decay must have ensued!-animal tissue being a poison-maker, that is, poison being the resultant of its functioning. It lives, moves and has its being at the expense of the vegetal cell, of and by which its whole structure is built, and the waste is -waste, non-usable stuff. The broad definition of the term poison is: that which must be expelled through the emunctories-skin, kidneys, bowels and lungs. Its transit in every tissue is arrested at the stroke of death and when devoured produces strength's counterfeitstimulation-just as a drink of grog does; it makes one groggy, variant for drunk, intoxicated, and that in proportion to the purity, that is, the resistive power, of the devourer.

Intoxication is the parent of delusion. "The anthropoid does not bewilder itself about endemons and cacodemons, only the anthropos." The former obeys the laws of its nature and is purely frugivorous; feed him on flesh, he will become fierce as a saber-toothed tiger and crazy as a salvation Corybant.

D. MACKAY, M. D.

VEGETARIAN FOR OVER HALF CENTURY.

To the Editor: I have been a vegetarian for the last fifty-five years, being in my 74th year now, and have read all the best works published on that subject. It is a glorious cause and lies at the foundation of all great reforms. Have been a very strong and active man and am yet for my age. I have never met with a meat eater that could equal me in this respect. That's the way to crush meat eaters all to atoms-out-work and out-do them in everything. J. G. MCGIRR.

ATTRACTING ATTENTION OF

THINKERS.

To the Editor: The principles of vegetarianism are getting a deeper hold on the minds of thinking people everywhere. It means reform in the dietary habits, and as health and economy go with it, laborers are especially benefited, and should embrace it as their best friend. Please find enclosed $1.00 for my subscription to the magazine another year. I hardly know how I could get along without it. H. A. BRADBURY.

VEGETABLES POSSESS STRIKING ADVANTAGES.

"It must be honestly admitted that weight by weight vegetable substances when they are carefully selected, possess the most striking advantages over animal food in nutritive value. . . . I should like to see the vegetarian and fruit living plan brought into general use, and I believe it will be."-Sir Benj. Ward Richardson, M. D., F. R. S.

SOCIETY STARTED IN NEW OR

LEANS.

The Vegetarian Hygienic Society has been formed in New Orleans, with the following officers: President, Dr. Robt. J. Osborne; vice-president, J. W. Hawthorn; treasurer, Robt. Gottschalk; secretary, Miss Lilian Coggswell. We intend emphasizing the importance of understanding the various hygienic modes of aiding nature in preventing and removing disease. Thus in intelligent unison with vegetarianism, and with the same purpose to serve, we hope our society will be greatly increased in members, etc. The membership consists of vegetarians and sympathetic non-vegetarians called associates.

ABOUT CALIFORNIA PRUNES. To the Editor: My attention was called to a short article in your January issue entitled "Fruit Growing in California." I think there must have been some mistake about it. It is a fact that farming is a very precarious method to support oneself in southern California, but it is more from lack of rain than any other cause. The item of prunes is mentioned in the article. I purchase prunes

will bring prices according to size. Prunes weighing one hundred twenty to the pound retail at two and a half cents per pound. The farmer may only get one cent per pound for this size but prunes yielding one cent to the farmer in California would not sell at ten cents in the East. Prunes worth ten cents to the retail trade here yield to the farmer about six or seven cents, and I think the same will hold good in the East. You can see how a misunderstanding may arise in saying "California prunes sell at ten cents per pound [in the East] that cost only one cent per pound in California." In Los Angeles and San Francisco one can purchase apples, apricots, peaches and pears on the street at one cent per pound. I do not believe they can be produced properly at that price. Here comes in railroad rates. Nothing short of the complete ownership and control of farming and railroad will stop the tremendous waste that goes on for lack of co-operation. Every merchant wants to make a profit. Produce should be raised for its use to the people, not for the profit that can be made out of it.

JAMES H. M. LAPSLEY.

about the quality. Prunes weighing thirty to the pound will bring to the farmer today about six cents. Prunes weighing forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, one hundred, one hundred ten, one hundred twenty to the pound

DOM."

The March session of the Philadelphia Vegetarian Society was held at 1023 Foulkrod street, Monday evening, the 17th. It was deeply interesting. Rev. H. S. Clubb, who presided, congratulated the meeting on having present a gentle

man who had devoted much attention to the subject on which he would discourse. After the opening praver Rev. J. W. MacPherson rose and stated that the "Economy of the Animal Kingdom," and its relation to spiritual subjects embraced a wide range of thought but he would endeavor to concentrate on the uses to man of the various creatures by which he is surrounded, in man's upward or spiritual development.

The history of creation as supposed to be recorded in the early chapters of Genesis is not a literal history but a figurative history of the origin and development of man's mental and spiritual nature and the material things mentioned should be understood as representative of the various characteristics of man as a living being. These different elements of man's nature were represented by "darkness and void," then creation of "light" and ultimately of the "fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea and the creeping things of the earth" all have their counterpart in man's spiritual nature. Man is a mierocosm including within himself all things of the created world around him in their essential nature and it was after the description of these creations followed the formation of man "in the image and likeness of God." Man is therefore an embodiment of the natures represented by these different creatures and by studying the nature and dispositions of these creatures man could learn what he is himself composed of. This representative character of animals, birds, and fishes is recognized continually in our common conversation. We speak of a crafty man as "a fox," for which we have the example of Christ himself. We also speak of a gluttonous, sordidly selfish man as "a hog." With a kind and gentle person we asso

ciate the ideas of a lamb or a dove and in his perfectly innocent capacity we speak of the "Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world."

Our language is full of these comparisons of the animal creation with the characteristics of human and even divine nature. Therefore it is conclusive evidence that the purpose of the animal creation is to furnish the means of educating man as to his rational and spiritual nature. Not to kill and eat but to guide man in the cultivation of his own moral and spiritual character.

The whole animal creation is divided into two kinds: The clean and the unclean, the good and the bad. Now it must be admitted that the ferocious, unclean and dangerous creatures and the filthy and loathsome creatures are all flesh caters, while the clean, harmless and gentle creatures are all grain, vegetable and fruit eaters. This is alone an important lesson in the higher culture.

There are also some creatures that one considered omnivorous, or such as can be induced to partake of either vegetables or flesh for food, and it is interesting to notice the effect of different foods on these creatures. Feed a dog on butcher's meat and he becomes ferocious and dangerous, which is a well known characteristic of the butcher's dog. Feed a cat on meat and she begins to spit and swear. The tiger nature becomes immediately manifest.

The address continued about an hour and was listened to with great interest and attention by an appreciative audience.

The president expressed the gratitude of the meeting for Dr. MacPherson's interesting presentation of the subject, remarking it was a mistake to suppose that by eating a lamb a person becomes lamb