300 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book IV. 



Anian informs us, that the Indians, before they were civilized 

 and taught arts by Ofiris, or Bacchus as the Greeks called him, fed 

 upon the barks of trees ^- : Wc are informed by Captain King f , 

 that the natives of Kamfchatka do at this day make food of the bark 

 of the birch tree X • Appian in his Lybian Hiftory relates that the 

 Numidians fed upon grafs, when they could get nothing elfe : And 

 Herodotus fays, that ihofe of Xerxes's army, who efcaped out of 

 Greece, in their way through Thrace, fed upon grafs. 



It is therefore I think evident that the firfl food of men upon this 

 earth was wild herbs and their roots, then the fruits of trees, and 

 particularly acorns. 



But the wild herbs that grow commonly in the fields, though 

 they be a very proper nourifhment for brute animals, are not a 

 proper nourifhment for the chief animal on this earth, man ; nor, 

 if tlicy were, is there a fufficient quantity of them for main- 

 taining man and the other animals of this earth : For men in the 

 firft ages of fociety increafed fo much, that, as I have elfewhere ob- 

 ferved §, almoll the whole hiftory of man in thofe firft ages confifts 

 of his migrations from countries, the produce of which could not 

 maintain him, to other countries where he could fubfift ; and even 

 in later times that famous migration of the Teutons and Cimbers 

 from the northern parts of Europe and Afia into the Roman em- 

 pire, and, in later times ftill, that of the Goths and Vandals, 

 v^ere both caufed, as I have elfewhere obferved [j, by thefe nations 

 not being able to live upon the fruits which their own country pro- 

 duced. 



* Vol. III. of this work, p. 375. 



f Vol. III. of Cooke's laft voyage, p. 333. 



t Vol. III. of A.ntient Metaphyfics, p. 376. 



i Vol. V. p. 243. 



I Ibid. p. 245. and Origin and Progrefs of Language, Vol. V. p. 93. 



