Ɛpsilon

From W. E. A. Axon   17 August 1880

Fern Bank, Higher Broughton, Manchester,

17 Aug 1880

My dear Sir

The enclosed cutting appears in the current no. of the “Herald of Health”, a popular American magazine edited by Dr M. L. Holbrook. From my interest in the subject I am led to ask whether the letter correctly represents your views on the question.1

As I am now writing a memoir on the “Food of the Poor”2 I am anxious to obtain the widest and most correct information. Such facts as those relating to the Chilian miners are in the highest degree of interest for such an investigation.3 Personally I am a Vegetarian chiefly on humanitarian grounds. From a passage at p. 80 of Life of Erasmus Darwin I should suppose you were not in favour of that diet.4 As a matter of fact I do not find Vegetarians such large eaters, though they have as a rule a keen enjoyment of food.

Apologizing for thus troubling you | I am | Yours truly | William E. A. Axon

[Enclosure]

darwin’s reply to a vegetarian. —The following letter was received from Charles Darwin in answer to one written to him by a person who saw in the theory of evolution, as set forth by this great naturalist, evidence in favor of vegetarianism. We find it in a German vegetarian journal, and translate: dear sir.—I have so many letters to answer that mine to you must be brief. Nevertheless, this has not the significance it would have if I had given the subject of vegetarian diet special attention. The only evidence in my opinion which would be of any value, would be the statistics in regard of the amount of labor performed in countries where the population lived on a different diet. I have always been astonished at the fact that the most extraordinary workers I ever saw, viz., the laborers in the mines of Chili, live exclusively on vegetable food, which includes many seeds of the leguminous plants. On the other hand, the Gauchos are a very active people, and live almost entirely on flesh. Further, it appears to me to be good evidence that in tropical Africa an extraordinary craving exists, which increases to a necessity at times, to eat flesh, though I presume that the seeds of leguminous plants abound there, for the earth nut is extensively cultivated.

1
The enclosure was clipped from the Herald of Health, August 1880, p. 180. For the original letter from CD, see Correspondence vol. 27, letter to Karl Höchberg, 25 February 1879. Herald of Health was edited by Martin Luther Holbrook.
2
The publication has not been identified; Axon published a number of works on diet, especially vegetarianism (for example, Axon 1891).
3
CD had described the diet of Chilean miners as almost exclusively vegetarian in Journal of researches, p. 317.
4
In Erasmus Darwin, p. 80, CD remarked: ‘as Dr. Darwin was a tall, bulky man, who lived much on milk, fruit, and vegetables, it is probable that he ate largely, as every man must do who works hard and lives on such a diet.’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-12690,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-12690