In the temperate regions the productions of the above-mentioned extremes aremingled. Here many animals whose flesh is fit for human food live and thrive, andhere grows, too, a vast variety of nutritious fruits, and roots, and seeds. Thephysical constitution of the various races of men that inhabit these regions ismodified accordingly. In the temperate climes men can live on vegetable food, oron animal food, or on both. The constitution differs, too, in different individuals, and it changes at different periods of the year. Some persons require more ofanimal, and others more of vegetable food, to preserve their bodily and mentalpowers in the best condition, and each one observes a change in himself in passingfrom winter to summer. In the summer the desire for a diet of fruits and vegetablesseems to come northward with the sun, and in the winter the appetite for fleshcomes southward from the arctic regions with the cold.When we consider the different conditions in which the different regions of theearth are placed in respect to their capacity of production for animal and vegetablefood, we shall see that this adjustment of the constitution of man, both to thedifferences of climate and to the changes of the seasons, is a very wise andbeneficent arrangement of Divine Providence. To confine man absolutely either toanimal or vegetable food would be to depopulate a large part of the earth.It results from these general facts in respect to the distribution of the supplies ofanimal and vegetable food for man in different latitudes that, in all northern climesin our hemisphere, men living in a savage state must be hunters, while those thatlive near the equator must depend for their subsistence on fruits and roots growingwild. When, moreover, any tribe or race of men in either of these localities take the 6first steps toward civilization, they begin, in the one case, by taming animals, andrearing them in flocks and herds; and, in the other case, by saving the seeds offood-producing plants, and cultivating them by artificial tillage in inclosed andprivate fields. This last is the condition of all the half-civilized tribes of the tropicalregions of the earth, whereas the former prevails in all the northern temperate andarctic regions, as far to the northward as domesticated animals can live