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found none who eat their own kind, unless through want of sense (few
indeed among them, and those being mothers, as with men, albeit they
be not many in number); and this happens only among the rapacious
animals, as with the leonine species, and leopards, panthers lynxes,
cats and the like, who sometimes eat their children; but thou,
besides thy children devourest father, mother, brothers and friends;
nor is this enough for thee, but thou goest to the chase on the
islands of others, taking other men and these half-naked, the ...
and the ... thou fattenest, and chasest them down thy own
throat[18]; now does not nature produce enough simples, for thee to
satisfy thyself? and if thou art not content with simples, canst
thou not by the mixture of them make infinite compounds, as Platina
wrote[Footnote 21: Come scrisse il Platina (Bartolomeo Sacchi, a
famous humanist). The Italian edition of his treatise De arte
coquinaria, was published under the title De la honestra
voluptate, e valetudine, Venezia 1487.], and other authors on
feeding?
[Footnote: We are led to believe that Leonardo himself was a
vegetarian from the following interesting passage in the first of
Andrea Corsali's letters to Giuliano de'Medici: Alcuni gentili
chiamati Guzzarati non si cibano di cosa, alcuna che tenga sangue,
ne fra essi loro consentono che si noccia ad alcuna cosa animata,
come il nostro Leonardo da Vinci.
5
-18. Amerigo Vespucci, with whom Leonardo was personally
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