Windows of Love

one hand, and French cooks and _pate de foie gras_ on the other. Butwhile everybody knows practically how things taste to us, and whichthings respectively we like and dislike, comparatively few people everrecognise that the sense of taste is not merely intended as a source ofgratification, but serves a useful purpose in our bodily economy, ininforming us what we ought to eat and what to refuse. Paradoxical as itmay sound at first to most people, nice things are, in the main, thingsthat are good for us, and nasty things are poisonous or otherwiseinjurious. That we often practically find the exact contrary the case(alas!) is due, not to the provisions of nature, but to the artificialsurroundings in which we live, and to the cunning way in which weflavour up unwholesome food, so as to deceive and cajole the naturalpalate. Yet, after all, it is a pleasant gospel that what we like isreally good for us, and, when we have made some small allowances forartificial conditions, it is in the main a true one also.

The sense of taste, which in the lowest animals is diffused equally overthe whole frame, is in ourselves and other higher creatures concentratedin a special part of the body, namely the mouth, where the food about tobe swallowed is chewed and otherwise prepared beforehand for the work ofdigestion. Now it is, of course, quite clear that some sort ofsupervision must be exercised by the body over the kind of food that isgoing to be put into it. Common experience teaches us that prussic acidand pure opium are undesirable food-stuffs in large quantities; that rawspirits, petroleum, and red lead should be sparingly partaken of by thejudicious feeder; and that even green fruit, the bitter end of cucumber,and the berries of deadly nightshade are unsatisfactory articles of dietwhen continuously persisted in. If, at the very outset of our digestiveapparatus, we hadn’t a sort of automatic premonitory adviser upon thekinds of food we ought or ought not to indulge in, we should naturallycommit considerable imprudences in the way of eating and drinking–evenmore than we do at present. Natural selection has therefore provided uswith a fairly efficient guide in this respect in the sense of taste,which is placed at the very threshold, as it were, of our digestivemechanism. It is the duty of taste to warn us against uneatable things,and to recommend to our favourable attention eatable and wholesome ones;and, on the whole, in spite of small occasional remissness, it performsthis duty with creditable success.

Taste, however, is not equally distributed over the whole surface of thetongue alike. There are three distinct regions or tracts, each of whichhas to perform its own special office and function. The tip of thetongue is concerned mainly with pungent and acrid tastes; the middleportion is sensitive chiefly to sweets and bitters; while the back orlower portion confines itself almost entirely to the flavours of roastmeats, butter, oils, and other rich or fatty substances. There are verygood reasons for this subdivision of faculties in the tongue, the objectbeing, as it were, to make each piece of food undergo three separateexaminations (like ’smalls,’ ‘mods,’ and ‘greats’ at Oxford), which mustbe successively passed before it is admitted into full participation in

the human economy. The first examination, as we shall shortly see, getsrid at once of substances which would be actively and immediatelydestructive to the very tissues of the mouth and body; the seconddiscriminates between poisonous and chemically harmless food-stuffs; andthe third merely decides the minor question whether the particular foodis likely to prove then and there wholesome or indigestible to theparticular person. The sense of taste proceeds, in fact, upon theprinciple of gradual selection and elimination; it refuses first what ispositively destructive, next what is more remotely deleterious, andfinally what is only undesirable or over-luscious.

When we want to assure ourselves, by means of taste, about any unknownobject–say a lump of some white stuff, which may be crystal, or glass,or alum, or borax, or quartz, or rock-salt–we put the tip of the tongueagainst it gingerly. If it begins to burn us, we draw it away more orless rapidly with an accompaniment in language strictly dependent uponour personal habits and manners. The test we thus occasionally apply,even in the civilised adult state, to unknown bodies is one that isbeing applied every day and all day long by children and savages.Unsophisticated humanity is constantly putting everything it sees up toits mouth in a frank spirit of experimental inquiry as to its gustatoryproperties. In civilised life we find everything ready labelled andassorted for us; we comparatively seldom require to roll the contents ofa suspicious bottle (in very small quantities) doubtfully upon thetongue in order to discover whether it is pale sherry or Chili vinegar,Dublin stout or mushroom ketchup. But in the savage state, from which,geologically and biologically speaking, we have only just emerged,bottles and labels do not exist. Primitive man, therefore, in his sweetsimplicity, has only two modes open before him for deciding whether thethings he finds are or are not strictly edible. The first thing he doesis to sniff at them; and smell, being, as Mr. Herbert Spencer has wellput it, an anticipatory taste, generally gives him some idea of what thething is likely to prove. The second thing he does is to pop it into hismouth, and proceed practically to examine its further characteristics.

Strictly speaking, with the tip of the tongue one can’t really taste atall. If you put a small drop of honey or of oil of bitter almonds onthat part of the mouth, you will find (no doubt to your great surprise)that it produces no effect of any sort; you only taste it when it beginsslowly to diffuse itself, and reaches the true tasting region in themiddle distance. But if you put a little cayenne or mustard on the samepart, you will find that it bites you immediately–the experiment shouldbe tried sparingly–while if you put it lower down in the mouth you willswallow it almost without noticing the pungency of the stimulant. Thereason is, that the tip of the tongue is supplied only with nerves whichare really nerves of touch, not nerves of taste proper; they belong to atotally different main branch, and they go to a different centre in thebrain, together with the very similar threads which supply the nervesof smell for mustard and pepper. That is why the smell and taste ofthese pungent substances are so much alike, as everybody must have

you are!? or ?How delightful it is to see man and wife so happytogether!? To us she was quite poetical, (for we are a kind ofcousins,) observing that hearts beating in unison like that made life aparadise of sweets; and that when kindred creatures were drawn togetherby sympathies so fine and delicate, what more than mortal happiness didnot our souls partake! To all this we answered ?Certainly,? or ?Verytrue,? or merely sighed, as the case might be. At every new act of theloving couple, the widow?s admiration broke out afresh; and when Mrs.Leaver would not permit Mr. Leaver to keep his hat off, lest the sunshould strike to his head, and give him a brain fever, Mrs. Starlingactually shed tears, and said it reminded her of Adam and Eve.

The loving couple were thus loving all the way to Twickenham, but whenwe arrived there (by which time the amateur crew looked very thirsty andvicious) they were more playful than ever, for Mrs. Leaver threw stonesat Mr. Leaver, and Mr. Leaver ran after Mrs. Leaver on the grass, in amost innocent and enchanting manner. At dinner, too, Mr. Leaver /would/steal Mrs. Leaver?s tongue, and Mrs. Leaver /would/ retaliate upon Mr.Leaver?s fowl; and when Mrs. Leaver was going to take some lobstersalad, Mr. Leaver wouldn?t let her have any, saying that it made herill, and she was always sorry for it afterwards, which afforded Mrs.Leaver an opportunity of pretending to be cross, and showing many otherprettinesses. But this was merely the smiling surface of their loves,not the mighty depths of the stream, down to which the company, to saythe truth, dived rather unexpectedly, from the following accident. Itchanced that Mr. Leaver took upon himself to propose the bachelors whohad first originated the notion of that entertainment, in doing which,he affected to regret that he was no longer of their body himself, andpretended grievously to lament his fallen state. This Mrs. Leaver?sfeelings could not brook, even in jest, and consequently, exclaimingaloud, ?He loves me not, he loves me not!? she fell in a very pitiablestate into the arms of Mrs. Starling, and, directly becoming insensible,was conveyed by that lady and her husband into another room. PresentlyMr. Leaver came running back to know if there was a medical gentleman incompany, and as there was, (in what company is there not?) both Mr.Leaver and the medical gentleman hurried away together.

The medical gentleman was the first who returned, and among his intimatefriends he was observed to laugh and wink, and look as unmedical asmight be; but when Mr. Leaver came back he was very solemn, and inanswer to all inquiries, shook his head, and remarked that Augusta wasfar too sensitive to be trifled with?an opinion which the widowsubsequently confirmed. Finding that she was in no imminent peril,however, the rest of the party betook themselves to dancing on thegreen, and very merry and happy they were, and a vast quantity offlirtation there was; the last circumstance being no doubt attributable,partly to the fineness of the weather, and partly to the locality, whichis well known to be favourable to all harmless recreations.

In the bustle of the scene, Mr. and Mrs. Leaver stole down to the boat,

noticed, a good sniff at a mustard-pot producing almost the sameirritating effects as an incautious mouthful. As a rule we don’taccurately distinguish, it is true, between these different regions oftaste in the mouth in ordinary life; but that is because we usually rollour food about instinctively, without paying much attention to theparticular part affected by it. Indeed, when one is trying deliberateexperiments in the subject, in order to test the varying sensitivenessof the different parts to different substances, it is necessary to keepthe tongue quite dry, in order to isolate the thing you areexperimenting with, and prevent its spreading to all parts of the mouthtogether. In actual practice this result is obtained in a ratherludicrous manner–by blowing upon the tongue, between each experiment,with a pair of bellows. To such undignified expedients does the pursuitof science lead the ardent modern psychologist. Those domestic rivals ofDr. Forbes Winslow, the servants, who behold the enthusiasticinvestigator alternately drying his tongue in this ridiculous fashion,as if he were a blacksmith’s fire, and then squeezing out a single dropof essence of pepper, vinegar, or beef-tea from a glass syringe upon thedry surface, not unnaturally arrive at the conclusion that master hasgone stark mad, and that, in their private opinion, it’s the microscopeand the skeleton as has done it.

Above all things, we don’t want to be flayed alive. So the kinds oftastes discriminated by the tip of the tongue are the pungent, likepepper, cayenne and mustard; the astringent, like borax and alum; thealkaline, like soda and potash; the acid, like vinegar and green fruit;and the saline, like salt and ammonia. Almost all the bodies likely togive rise to such tastes (or, more correctly, sensations of touch inthe tongue) are obviously unwholesome and destructive in theircharacter, at least when taken in large quantities. Nobody wishes todrink nitric acid by the quart. The first business of this part of thetongue is, therefore, to warn us emphatically against caustic substancesand corrosive acids, against vitriol and kerosene, spirits of wine andether, capsicums and burning leaves or roots, such as those of thecommon English lords-and-ladies. Things of this sort are immediatelydestructive to the very tissues of the tongue and palate; if takenincautiously in too large doses, they burn the skin off the roof of themouth; and when swallowed they play havoc, of course, with our internalarrangements. It is highly advisable, therefore, to have an immediatewarning of these extremely dangerous substances, at the very outset ofour feeding apparatus.

This kind of taste hardly differs from touch or burning. The sensibilityof the tip of the tongue is only a very slight modification of thesensibility possessed by the skin generally, and especially by the innerfolds over all delicate parts of the body. We all know that commoncaustic burns us wherever it touches; and it burns the tongue only in asomewhat more marked manner. Nitric or sulphuric acid attacks thefingers each after its own kind. A mustard plaster makes us tinglealmost immediately; and the action of mustard on the tongue hardly

differs, except in being more instantaneous and more discriminative.Cantharides work in just the same way. If you cut a red pepper in twoand rub it on your neck, it will sting just as it does when put intosoup (this experiment, however, is best tried upon one’s youngerbrother; if made personally, it hardly repays the trouble andannoyance). Even vinegar and other acids, rubbed into the skin, arefollowed by a slight tingling; while the effect of brandy, applied,say, to the arms, is gently stimulating and pleasurable, somewhat in thesame way as when normally swallowed in conjunction with the habitualseltzer. In short, most things which give rise to distinct tastes whenapplied to the tip of the tongue give rise to fainter sensations whenapplied to the skin generally. And one hardly needs to be reminded thatpepper or vinegar placed (accidentally as a rule) on the inner surfaceof the eyelids produces a very distinct and unpleasant smart.

The fact is, the liability to be chemically affected by pungent or acidbodies is common to every part of the skin; but it is least felt wherethe tough outer skin is thickest, and most felt where that skin isthinnest, and the nerves are most plentifully distributed near thesurface. A mustard plaster would probably fail to draw at all on one’sheel or the palm of one’s hand; while it is decidedly painful on one’sneck or chest; and a mere speck of mustard inside the eyelid gives onepositive torture for hours together. Now, the tip of the tongue is justa part of one’s body specially set aside for this very object, providedwith an extremely thin skin, and supplied with an immense number ofnerves, on purpose so as to be easily affected by all such pungent,alkaline, or spirituous substances. Sir Wilfrid Lawson would probablyconclude that it was deliberately designed by Providence to warn usagainst a wicked indulgence in the brandy and seltzer aforesaid.

At first sight it might seem as though there were hardly enough of suchpungent and fiery things in existence to make it worth while for us tobe provided with a special mechanism for guarding against them. That istrue enough, no doubt, as regards our modern civilised life; though,even now, it is perhaps just as well that our children should have aninternal monitor (other than conscience) to dissuade them immediatelyfrom indiscriminate indulgence in photographic chemicals, the contentsof stray medicine bottles, and the best dried West India chilies. But inan earlier period of progress, and especially in tropical countries(where the Darwinians have now decided the human race made its first_debut_ upon this or any other stage), things were very differentindeed. Pungent and poisonous plants and fruits abounded on every side.We have all of us in our youth been taken in by some too cruelly waggishcompanion, who insisted upon making us eat the bright, glossy leaves ofthe common English arum, which without look pretty and juicy enough, butwithin are full of the concentrated essence of pungency and profanity.Well, there are hundreds of such plants, even in cold climates, to temptthe eyes and poison the veins of unsuspecting cattle or childishhumanity. There is buttercup, so horribly acrid that cows carefullyavoid it in their closest cropped pastures; and yet your cow is not

usually a too dainty animal. There is aconite, the deadly poison withwhich Dr. Lamson removed his troublesome relatives. There is baneberry,whose very name sufficiently describes its dangerous nature. There arehorse-radish, and stinging rocket, and biting wall-pepper, and stillsmarter water-pepper, and worm-wood, and nightshade, and spurge, andhemlock, and half a dozen other equally unpleasant weeds. All of thesehave acquired their pungent and poisonous properties, just as nettleshave acquired their sting, and thistles their thorns, in order toprevent animals from browsing upon them and destroying them. And theanimals in turn have acquired a very delicate sense of pungency onpurpose to warn them beforehand of the existence of such dangerous andundesirable qualities in the plants which they might otherwise betempted incautiously to swallow.

In tropical woods, where our ‘hairy quadrumanous ancestor’ (Darwinianfor the primaeval monkey, from whom we are presumably descended) usedplayfully to disport himself, as yet unconscious of his glorious destinyas the remote progenitor of Shakespeare, Milton, and the late Mr.Peace–in tropical woods, such acrid or pungent fruits and plants areparticularly common, and correspondingly annoying. The fact is, ourprimitive forefather and all the other monkeys are, or were, confirmedfruit-eaters. But to guard against their depredations a vast number oftropical fruits and nuts have acquired disagreeable or fiery rinds andshells, which suffice to deter the bold aggressor. It may not be nice toget your tongue burnt with a root or fruit, but it is at least a greatdeal better than getting poisoned; and, roughly speaking, pungency inexternal nature exactly answers to the rough gaudy labels which somechemists paste on bottles containing poisons. It means to say, ‘Thisfruit or leaf, if you eat it in any quantities, will kill you.’ That isthe true explanation of capsicums, pimento, colocynth, croton oil, theupas tree, and the vast majority of bitter, acrid, or fiery fruits andleaves. If we had to pick up our own livelihood, as our naked ancestorshad to do, from roots, seeds, and berries, we should far more readilyappreciate this simple truth. We should know that a great many moreplants than we now suspect are bitter or pungent, and thereforepoisonous. Even in England we are familiar enough with such defences asthose possessed by the outer rind of the walnut; but the tropicalcashew-nut has a rind so intensely acrid that it blisters the lips andfingers instantaneously, in the same way as cantharides would do. Ibelieve that on the whole, taking nature throughout, more fruits andnuts are poisonous, or intensely bitter, or very fiery, than are sweet,luscious, and edible.

‘But,’ says that fidgety person, the hypothetical objector (whom onealways sets up for the express purpose of promptly knocking him downagain), ‘if it be the business of the fore part of the tongue to warn usagainst pungent and acrid substances, how comes it that we purposely usesuch things as mustard, pepper, curry-powder, and vinegar?’ Well, inthemselves all these things are, strictly speaking, bad for us; but insmall quantities they act as agreeable stimulants; and we take care in

and disposed themselves under the awning, Mrs. Leaver reclining her headupon Mr. Leaver?s shoulder, and Mr. Leaver grasping her hand with greatfervour, and looking in her face from time to time with a melancholy andsympathetic aspect. The widow sat apart, feigning to be occupied with abook, but stealthily observing them from behind her fan; and the twofiremen-watermen, smoking their pipes on the bank hard by, nudged eachother, and grinned in enjoyment of the joke. Very few of the partymissed the loving couple; and the few who did, heartily congratulatedeach other on their disappearance.

THE CONTRADICTORY COUPLE

One would suppose that two people who are to pass their whole livestogether, and must necessarily be very often alone with each other,could find little pleasure in mutual contradiction; and yet what is morecommon than a contradictory couple?

The contradictory couple agree in nothing but contradiction. Theyreturn home from Mrs. Bluebottle?s dinner-party, each in an oppositecorner of the coach, and do not exchange a syllable until they have beenseated for at least twenty minutes by the fireside at home, when thegentleman, raising his eyes from the stove, all at once breaks silence:

?What a very extraordinary thing it is,? says he, ?that you /will/contradict, Charlotte!? ?/I/ contradict!? cries the lady, ?but that?sjust like you.? ?What?s like me?? says the gentleman sharply. ?Sayingthat I contradict you,? replies the lady. ?Do you mean to say that youdo /not/ contradict me?? retorts the gentleman; ?do you mean to say thatyou have not been contradicting me the whole of this day?? ?Do you meanto tell me now, that you have not? I mean to tell you nothing of thekind,? replies the lady quietly; ?when you are wrong, of course I shallcontradict you.?

During this dialogue the gentleman has been taking his brandy-and-wateron one side of the fire, and the lady, with her dressing-case on thetable, has been curling her hair on the other. She now lets down herback hair, and proceeds to brush it; preserving at the same time an airof conscious rectitude and suffering virtue, which is intended toexasperate the gentleman?and does so.

?I do believe,? he says, taking the spoon out of his glass, and tossingit on the table, ?that of all the obstinate, positive, wrong-headedcreatures that were ever born, you are the most so, Charlotte.??Certainly, certainly, have it your own way, pray. You see how much /I/contradict you,? rejoins the lady. ?Of course, you didn?t contradict meat dinner-time?oh no, not you!? says the gentleman. ?Yes, I did,? says

preparing most of them to get rid of the most objectionable properties.Moreover, we use them, not as foods, but merely as condiments. One dropof oil of capsicums is enough to kill a man, if taken undiluted; but inactual practice we buy it in such a very diluted form that comparativelylittle harm arises from using it. Still, very young children dislike allthese violent stimulants, even in small quantities; they won’t touchmustard, pepper, or vinegar, and they recoil at once from wine orspirits. It is only by slow degrees that we learn these unnaturaltastes, as our nerves get blunted and our palates jaded; and we all knowthat the old Indian who can eat nothing but dry curries, devilledbiscuits, anchovy paste, pepper-pot, mulligatawny soup, Worcestershiresauce, preserved ginger, hot pickles, fiery sherry, and neat cognac, isalso a person with no digestion, a fragmentary liver, and very littlechance of getting himself accepted by any safe and solvent insuranceoffice. Throughout, the warning in itself is a useful one; it is we whofoolishly and persistently disregard it. Alcohol, for example, tells usat once that it is bad for us; yet we manage so to dress it up withflavouring matters and dilute it with water that we overlook the fierycharacter of the spirit itself. But that alcohol is in itself a badthing (when freely indulged in) has been so abundantly demonstrated inthe history of mankind that it hardly needs any further proof.

The middle region of the tongue is the part with which we experiencesensations of taste proper–that is to say, of sweetness and bitterness.In a healthy, natural state all sweet things are pleasant to us, and allbitters (even if combined with sherry) unpleasant. The reason for thisis easy enough to understand. It carries us back at once into thoseprimaeval tropical forests, where our ‘hairy ancestor’ used to diethimself upon the fruits of the earth in due season. Now, almost alledible fruits, roots, and tubers contain sugar; and therefore thepresence of sugar is, in the wild condition, as good a rough test ofwhether anything is good to eat as one could easily find. In fact, theargument cuts both ways: edible fruits are sweet because they areintended for man and other animals to eat; and man and other animalshave a tongue pleasurably affected by sugar because sugary things innature are for them in the highest degree edible. Our early progenitorsformed their taste upon oranges, mangoes, bananas, and grapes; uponsweet potatoes, sugar-cane, dates, and wild honey. There is scarcelyanything fitted for human food in the vegetable world (and our earliestancestors were most undoubted vegetarians) which does not contain sugarin considerable quantities. In temperate climates (where man is but arecent intruder), we have taken, it is true, to regarding wheaten breadas the staff of life; but in our native tropics enormous populationsstill live almost exclusively upon plantains, bananas, bread-fruit,yams, sweet potatoes, dates, cocoanuts, melons, cassava, pine-apples,and figs. Our nerves have been adapted to the circumstances of our earlylife as a race in tropical forests; and we still retain a marked likingfor sweets of every sort. Not content with our strawberries,raspberries, gooseberries, currants, apples, pears, cherries, plums andother northern fruits, we ransack the world for dates, figs, raisins,

and oranges. Indeed, in spite of our acquired meat-eating propensities,it may be fairly said that fruits and seeds (including wheat, rice,peas, beans, and other grains and pulse) still form by far the mostimportant element in the food-stuffs of human populations generally.

But besides the natural sweets, we have also taken to producingartificial ones. Has any housewife ever realised the alarming conditionof cookery in the benighted generations before the invention of sugar?It is really almost too appalling to think about. So many things that wenow look upon as all but necessaries–cakes, puddings, made dishes,confectionery, preserves, sweet biscuits, jellies, cooked fruits, tarts,and so forth–were then practically quite impossible. Fancy attemptingnowadays to live a single day without sugar; no tea, no coffee, no jam,no pudding, no cake, no sweets, no hot toddy before one goes to bed; thebare idea of it is too terrible. And yet that was really the abjectcondition of all the civilised world up to the middle of the middleages. Horace’s punch was sugarless and lemonless; the gentle Virgilnever tasted the congenial cup of afternoon tea; and Socrates went fromhis cradle to his grave without ever knowing the flavour of peppermintbull’s eyes. How the children managed to spend their Saturday _as_, ortheir weekly _obolus_, is a profound mystery. To be sure, people hadhoney; but honey is rare, dear, and scanty; it can never have filled onequarter the place that sugar fills in our modern affections. Try for amoment to realise drinking honey with one’s whisky-and-water, or doingthe year’s preserving with a pot of best Narbonne, and you get at once acommon measure of the difference between the two as practicalsweeteners. Nowadays, we get sugar from cane and beet-root in abundance,while sugar-maples and palm-trees of various sorts afford a considerablesupply to remoter countries. But the childhood of the little Greeks andRomans must have been absolutely unlighted by a single ray of joy fromchocolate creams or Everton toffee.

The consequence of this excessive production of sweets in modern timesis, of course, that we have begun to distrust the indications affordedus by the sense of taste in this particular as to the wholesomeness ofvarious objects. We can mix sugar with anything we like, whether it hadsugar in it to begin with or otherwise; and by sweetening and flavouringwe can give a false palatableness to even the worst and mostindigestible rubbish, such as plaster-of-Paris, largely sold under thename of sugared almonds to the ingenuous youth of two hemispheres. Butin untouched nature the test rarely or never fails. As long as fruitsare unripe and unfit for human food, they are green and sour; as soon asthey ripen they become soft and sweet, and usually acquire some brightcolour as a sort of advertisement of their edibility. In the main, barthe accidents of civilisation, whatever is sweet is good to eat–naymore, is meant to be eaten; it is only our own perverse folly that makesus sometimes think all nice things bad for us, and all wholesome thingsnasty. In a state of nature, the exact opposite is really the case. Onemay observe, too, that children, who are literally young savages in moresenses than one, stand nearer to the primitive feeling in this respect

than grown-up people. They unaffectedly like sweets; adults, who havegrown more accustomed to the artificial meat diet, don’t, as a rule,care much for puddings, cakes, and made dishes. (May I ventureparenthetically to add, any appearance to the contrary notwithstanding,that I am not a vegetarian, and that I am far from desiring to bringdown upon my devoted head the imprecation pronounced against the rashperson who would rob a poor man of his beer. It is quite possible tobelieve that vegetarianism was the starting point of the race, withoutwishing to consider it also as the goal; just as it is quite possible toregard clothes as purely artificial products of civilisation, withoutdesiring personally to return to the charming simplicity of the Gardenof Eden.)

Bitter things in nature at large, on the contrary, are almost invariablypoisonous. Strychnia, for example, is intensely bitter, and it is wellknown that life cannot be supported on strychnia alone for more than afew hours. Again, colocynth and aloes are far from being wholesome foodstuffs, for a continuance; and the bitter end of cucumber does notconduce to the highest standard of good living. The bitter matter indecaying apples is highly injurious when swallowed, which it isn’tlikely to be by anybody who ever tastes it. Wormwood and walnut-shellscontain other bitter and poisonous principles; absinthe, which is madefrom one of them, is a favourite slow poison with the fashionable youngmen of Paris, who wish to escape prematurely from ‘Le monde ou l’ons’ennuie.’ But prussic acid is the commonest component in all naturalbitters, being found in bitter almonds, apple pips, the kernels ofmangosteens, and many other seeds and fruits. Indeed, one may sayroughly that the object of nature generally is to prevent the actualseeds of edible fruits from being eaten and digested; and for thispurpose, while she stores the pulp with sweet juices, she encloses theseed itself in hard stony coverings, and makes it nasty with bitteressences. Eat an orange-pip, and you will promptly observe how effectualis this arrangement. As a rule, the outer rind of nuts is bitter, andthe inner kernel of edible fruits. The tongue thus warns us immediatelyagainst bitter things, as being poisonous, and prevents us automaticallyfrom swallowing them.

‘But how is it,’ asks our objector again, ‘that so many poisons aretasteless, or even, like sugar of lead, pleasant to the palate?’ Theanswer is (you see, we knock him down again, as usual) because thesepoisons are themselves for the most part artificial products; they donot occur in a state of nature, at least in man’s ordinary surroundings.Almost every poisonous thing that we are really liable to meet with inthe wild state we are warned against at once by the sense of taste; butof course it would be absurd to suppose that natural selection couldhave produced a mode of warning us against poisons which have neverbefore occurred in human experience. One might just as well expect thatit should have rendered us dynamite-proof, or have given us a skin likethe hide of a rhinoceros to protect us against the future contingency ofthe invention of rifles.