Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

348 FOOD or the highiands.
have gained in beauty from the same cause ; that being-
very much determined by the sufficient or insufficient
supply of food which children get in early life. Better
fed children than those of the Highland peasantry there
cannot be ;
and, to the disgrace of England, they are, on
the average, in far better and higher condition than the
children in large English towns, and where wages are
high. The English labourer or manufacturer either
starves his family to indulge himself in gin and porter,
or else, instead of being fed with a sufficiency of cheap
and substantial diet, they are, from false pride, starved
on an insufficient proportion of wheaten bread, flesh meat,
and tea. Another great advantage has arisen from the
potatoe ; and this is, that the food of the people is less
subject to casualties and failures than when it consisted
of grain. Except from early frosts, it seldom suffers;
and any very considerable or extensive failures of the
Highland potatoe crops, have, I believe, never yet oc-
curred. The failure of grain crops, from bad seasons
and various causes, still happens; and formerly, when
that was the sole dependence, the effects were serious,
and often dreadful, even with a far inferior population.
Ancient tales of famine are frequent; and it was under
such visitations as these that the people had recourse to
the singular and apparently savage expedient, long since
abandoned, of bleeding their cattle; the expedient of a
starving Arab. Of absolute famine now, there are no
examples : but cases very nearly approaching to it, have
occurred from the failure of the grain crops. Taking that
part of the supply, only at a third of all the food, it is
plain that a half crop would leave a serious deficiency;
and, according to the too common improvidence of the
people, perhaps a month of famine. If, in many places,
the small tenants are really unable to raise a surplus for
contingencies, on account of the want of land, it is also