DIETETIC CURIOSITIES. 729 



The old proverb cle gustibus can hardly prevent astonishment at the 

 diversity of tastes. What would Pythagoras have said about our na- 

 tional dish of pork and beans, or what shall we say to explain the Japa- 

 nese prejudice against milk, the Papuan's partiality for fat white cater- 

 pillars, or the gliraria that were attached to every decent household of 

 imperial Rome ? Athenaeus describes a glirarium as a large brick struc- 

 ture, divided by wire partitions into small cells, from five hundred to 

 two thousand of them ; every cell the receptacle of a captive rat, which 

 was fattened on husks, rotten fish, and other offal, till a further increase 

 in bulk would make it difficult to extract the animal through the nar- 

 row door of its cage. The perfect specimens were then collected, 

 stufi"ed with crushed figs, and served in a sauce of olive-oil at the- ban- 

 quets of wealthy patriots who preferred domestic delicacies to colonial 

 imports. The Digger Indians of our Pacific slope rejoiced in the great 

 locust-swarms of 1875 as in a gracious dispensation of the Great Sjairit, 

 and laid in a store of dried locust-powder for years to come. Even 

 mineral substances and strong mineral poisons have their votaries. 

 Mithridates, King of Pontus, could take a large dose of arsenic with 

 impunity, and the mountaineers of Savoy and southern Switzerland 

 use arsenic habitually as a safeguard against pulmonic affections. The 

 poor Norsemen often mix their daily bread with a whitish mineral pow- 

 der, more from n^essity than a vitiated taste, we hope ; but a similar 

 substance is employed by the natives of Brazil and other parts of tropi- 

 cal America without any such excuse. The name of Panama is derived 

 irom panamante {originoWy pan-de-monte, mountain-bread), a substance 

 which the Indians of Central America prepared from a mealy gypsum- 

 powder, found here and there in the Sierra. Humboldt describes a 

 tribe of Indians in northern Brazil who have been addicted to the use 

 of panamante for generations, and were distinguished by a monstrous 

 protuberance and induration of the upper abdomen. When the French 

 were masters of St. Domingo their negro slaves had contracted a simi- 

 lar passion, and could only be restrained by barbarous punishments 

 from indulging it to excess. 



It would be erroneous to suppose that cannibalism has become quite 

 extinct. Among the Dyaks of Borneo there is a recurrence of the 

 outrage after every petty feud and raid, and many of the South Sea 

 Islands are still infested with secret anthropophagi. The Pintos, an 

 aboriginal tribe of Yucatan, have repeatedly been detected in cannibal 

 practices ; and phenomenal cases have occurred in Asia after every 

 protracted famine. In 1873 the Chasseurs d'Afrique captured an old 

 Kabyle on the plateau of Sidi-Belbez (Algiers), who had committed in- 

 numerable murders to indulge this horrible passion, and had twice been 

 caught in flagrante by his countrymen, who contented themselves with 

 giving him a good hiding the first time, and released him on another 

 occasion when they found his victim had only been a French settler ! 



The slaughter-houses of every large city are visited by delicate ladies, 

 VOL. XIV. — 47 



