To Karl Höchberg 25 February 1879
Down, | Beckenham, Kent.
Feb. 25th 79
Dear Sir
I have so many letters to answer that I must write briefly; but this does not signify as I have never attended specially to the subject of vegetarian diet.—1 The sole evidence which in my opinion would be of real value, would be statistics & amount of work performed in countries where the inhabitants live on widely different diets. I have always been struck with the fact that the hardest workers, whom I ever saw, namely miners in Chile, lived exclusively on vegetable diet including much seeds of the Leguminosæ. On the other hand the Gauchos are very fine active men, who live almost exclusively on meat. Again there seems good evidence that in Tropical Africa there is an extraordinary craving, almost amounting to a necessity, for meat at intervals; & yet I suppose that they eat largely of the seeds of Leguminosæ, for the Arachis hypogæa is largely cultivated.2
Dear Sir | Yours faithfully | Ch. Darwin
Footnotes
Bibliography
Journal of researches: Journal of researches into the geology and natural history of the various countries visited by HMS Beagle, under the command of Captain FitzRoy, RN, from 1832 to 1836. By Charles Darwin. London: Henry Colburn. 1839.
Summary
Discusses the value of a vegetable diet.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-11902
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Karl Höchberg
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.560)
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11902,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11902.xml