TEE MONSTROUS IN ART, 731 



jurious, but not more unnatural than our custom of swallowing boiling- 

 hot soups and stews. 



In the use of hot spices the Spaniards and their South American 

 kinsmen exceed every other nation. Chile Colorado, or red pepper, is 

 one of the mildest condiments of a Peruvian kitchen. The yerha 

 blanca, a whitish-green herb which is used raw with olive-oil on sand- 

 wiches, and enters into the composition of various ragouts, is described 

 as resembling the lapis infernalis in its effect on a normal tongue. A 

 Mexican can chew up a handful of red pepper as we would so much 

 dried fruit, and eats onions, garlic, and salted radishes as a relief from 

 more pungent tastes. I must believe it, on the testimony of the entire 

 medical faculty of the city of Bremen, that a man who was treated in 

 their city hospital for a most mysterious complaint settled the dispute of 

 his physicians by confessing a weakness for tan-xcater — the fiery infusion 

 of tan-bark, in which he had indulged rather to excess in the last year. 

 The inhabitants of southern Russia, especially of the Dnieper Delta, are 

 all day long chewing the aromatic seeds of the sunflower and different 

 kinds of pumpkin-seeds, which appears to be less a stimulation than an 

 idle habit, like the use of chewing gum in our boarding-schools. 



Timour the Tartar celebrated his victories by solemn barbecues of 

 broiled horseflesh and fermented mare's milk, or koumiss, which is still 

 a favorite drink of his countrymen. Tartars also use a decoction of the 

 poisonous fly-sponge as a stimulating beverage, and according to Vam- 

 b6ry have a national foible for morsels of superannuated meat, of an 

 aroma which the French term of haut-goM would hardly begin to de- 

 scribe. Yet these same Tartars might shudder at being confronted with 

 a dish of that Limburg delicacy which finds its way into the best hotels 

 of Continental Europe. I can not forget the emphatic protest of a 

 Spanish officer who was invited to partake by a German admirer of the 

 questionable dainty, in the cabin of a Havana steamer. " You think 

 it unhealthy to eat that ? " inquired the Hamburger, in polite astonish- 

 ment. " Unhealthy ? " exclaimed the Hidalgo, with a withering look 

 and a gasp for a more adequate word — " no, sir ! I think it an unnatu- 

 ral crime ! " 



■♦*» 



THE MOI^STKOUS IN AET. 



By SAMUEL KNEELAND, A. M., M. D. 



MANY persons of culture and poetic imagination, with a keen 

 sense of the beautiful, but with little knowledge of livinor 

 nature, believe and maintain, and in one sense justly, that certain 

 works of old and modern masters are works of high art, from color, 

 grouping, elegance of figures, and the various accessories which, in 

 themselves, or by ideas and emotions excited by them, make painting 

 and sculpture very powerful agents in instructing and elevating man- 



