The great question in regard to diet, viz., whether any food of the animal kind is absolutely necessary to the most full and perfect development of man's whole nature, being fairly up, both in Europe and America, and there being no practical, matter-of-fact volume on the subject, of moderate size, in the market, numerous friends have been for some time urging me to get up a new and revised edition of a work which, though imperfect, has been useful to many, while it has been for some time out of print. Such an edition I have at length found time to prepare—to which I have added, in various ways, especially in the form of new facts, nearly fifty pages of new and original matter.

West Newton, Mass., 1849.