TEMPERANCE AND TOBACCO.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 380, 31 August 1875, Page 4

TEMPERANCE AND TOBACCO.

(From the German of Br Edward Reich.) Like their cousins the Spaniards, the Italians are distinguished by the greatest moderation and sobriety. Besides water, the drinks most in favour are cooling liquids, coffee, and wine. Of animal food the Italians partake much more sparingly than of vegetable food. They give the preference to fowls ; they are fond of salomi-sausages made from the flesh of asses. Oxen, goats, fishes, famish them likewise with no inconsiderable supplies for their repast. Of vegetable aliments we meet among the Italians with chestnuts, with polenta prepared from maize, with macaroni, and other farinaceous food which is seasoned with cheese. The poorest classes subsist almost exclusively on polenta and the fruits of trees, In many places olive oil takes the place of butter. The Italians are passionately devoted to tobscco, and they smoke the very strongest kinds. The climate, especially that of Southern Italy, and the tendency to indolence thereby engendered, determine the Italian, in whom much less iutensity of change in the substances constituting life is noticeable than in his northern neighbours, to be satisfied with much smaller quantities of food. In regard to the inhabitants of the island of Sardinia, we have to state that, unlike the Southern Italians, they eat a comparatively large quantity of animal food, are fond of the pleasures of the table, but never fall into intemperance. They are fondest of young swine, and of oxen roasted in a pit, when in the inside of the ox a young pig or a sheep is likewise roasted. Veal is not, as a rule, eaten; milk and butter consumed only in small quantities; spirituous drinks very seldom tasted.