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the loot of a beast because I eat fruits and leaves of trees and grass of the earth." This was, of course, long before the introduction of the potato. Curtin fails to give a date but says that the stories "relate to heroes and adventures of an ancient time, and contain elements peculiar to early ages of story telling." A preference for meat foods, if not a prejudice against the others, can be traced through the history and literature of mankind in every age, clime and country. Except for wine which is from the kingdom of vegetables, the highest praise of Greek poetry, particularly the Homeric, is for meats. The same indication of preference runs through the Bible. What is said in Genesis, IV, 2-5, is considered more fully in a later chapter: that the Lord was not pleased with Cain when he brought an offering of garden produce but was pleased with Abel when he brought some fat mutton. This led to the tragedy in which Cain the gardener killed Abel the shepherd, foreshadowing that bitterness which the vegetarians still feel against those who persist in the eating of sirloins and chops. A conclusion of our experiment which the medical profession seemingly finds difficult to assimilate, but which at the same time is one of our clearest results, is that a normal meat diet, where one eats at each meal as much lean and fat as he likes, is not a high protein diet. A casual look at the meals we ate in Bellevue might lead to the conclusion that we were living chiefly on lean; but then you would be forgetting that in a medium or rare sirloin steak the red meat on your plate is mostly water, while the white suet has very little water in it. Speaking in terms of calories Dr. Lieb, the clinician of the Russell Sage tests, put it this way: "Stefansson averaged about 2,650 calories a day, 2,100 calories consisting of fat and 550 of protein. Andersen aver, aged about 2,620 calories a day, 2,110 calories consisting of fat and 510 of protein."
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In another part of the same paper Dr. Lieb says that the ratio of protein to fat in Andersen's food and mine does not make this a high protein diet. He said elsewhere that while the protein percentage of our diet was perhaps a little above average, it was not as high as the protein ratio of a great many New York businessmen who are fond of meat and who can afford to eat as much of it as they like at their various meals. This is remembering, of course, that the said businessmen would be getting protein from a number of sources other than meat; as, for instance, from oatmeal, chocolate, baked beans, milk and eggs. That meat, as some have contended, is a particularly stimulating food I verified subjectively during our New York experiment—it seemed to me that I was more optimistic and energetic than ordinarily. To the best of my memory and judgment, I looked forward with more anticipation to the next day or the next job, and was more likely to expect pleasure or success. This may have a bearing on the common report that the uncivilized Eskimos are the happiest people in the world. There have been many explanations— that an Arctic climate is invigorating, that a hunter's life is pleasant, and that the poor wretches just don't know how badly off they are. The suggestion is now added that the optimism may be in part directly caused by what they eat. Some additional fairly precise things can be said of the way we fared during the year on meat. For instance, with Dr. DuBois as pacemaker, we used every few weeks to run around the reservoir in Central Park and thence to his house, going up the stairs two or three at a time, plumping down on cots and having scientific attendants register our breathing, pulse rate, and other crude reactions. These observations, when compared with others made just before the exercise, appear to show that our stamina increased with the lengthening of the meat period. Andersen, who had suffered one head cold after another