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“In addition to the Prefatory Dialogue and the Fundamental Truths, already mentioned, the little volume includes a Preface, thirty ‘Meditations,’ or chapters, and, in conclusion, a dozen narrative and descriptive ‘Varieties’ bearing upon the subject. The whole amounts to less than three hundred small pages.

“The earlier chapters on the senses of taste, appetite, and thirst are largely physiological or psychological, but even here the author carries out with charm his intention of touching but lightly subjects likely to be dull. Throughout he practices the preaching of the mad poet Blake,—‘To particularize is the great distinction of merit,’—and everywhere he introduces original anecdotes, witticisms, and similar side-dishes. Although Savarin separates the functions of taste into direct, complete, and reflective, he finds himself unable to classify its results further than to suggest some such gradation as,—positive, beef; comparative, veal; superlative, pheasant. For its greatest satisfaction one should eat slowly and in minute portions—all that is valuable of ‘Fletcherism’ in a sentence. Anything else would be unworthy of our perfected organism, ‘the structure of the tongue of all animals being analogous to the reach of their intelligence.’ Under ‘Thirst’ there is a similar, but even more daringly imaginative observation: ‘The desire for fermented liquors and curiosity about a future state are the two distinctive attributes of man as the masterpiece of nature.’