148 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



small square reddish cakes publicly sold in the villages. The 

 natives called them tana ampo (tanah signifies earth in Malay 

 and Javanese) ; and on examining them more closely, he found 

 that they were cakes made of a reddish clay, and intended for 

 eating.* The edible clay of Samarang has recently (1847) 

 been sent, by Mohnike, to Berlin in the shape of rolled tubes 

 like cinnamon, and has been examined by Ehrenberg. It is a 

 fresh-water formation deposited in tertiary limestone, and 

 composed of microscopic polygastrica (Gallionella, Navicula) 

 and of Phytolitharia.f The natives of New Caledonia, to 

 appease their hunger, eat lumps as large as the fist of 

 friable steatite, in which Vauquelin detected an appreci- 

 able quantity of copper .J In Popayan and many parts of 

 Peru calcareous earth is sold in the streets as an article of 

 food for the Indians. This is eaten together with the Coca 

 (the leaves of the Erythroxylon peruvianum). We thus find 

 that the practice of eating earth is common throughout the 

 whole of the torrid zone among the indolent races who inhabit 

 the most beautiful and fruitful regions of the earth. But 

 accounts have also come from the north, through Berzelius 

 and Retzius, from which we learn, that in the most remote 

 parts of Sweden hundreds of cartloads of earth containing 

 infusoria are annually consumed by the country people as 

 bread-meal, more from fancy (like the smoking of tobacco) 

 than from necessity. In some parts of Finland a similar kind 

 of earth is mixed with the bread. It consists of empty shells 

 of animalcules, so small and soft, that they break between the 

 teeth without any perceptible noise, filling the stomach 

 without yielding any actual nourishment. Chronicles and 

 archives often make mention during times of war of the 

 employment as food of infusorial earth, which is spoken of 

 under the indefinite and general term of " mountain meal." 

 Such, for instance, was the case in the Thirty Years' War, at 

 Camin in Pomerania, Muskau in the Lausitz, and Kleiken 

 in the Dessau territory; and subsequently in 1719 and 1733, 

 at the fortress of Wittenberg. 



* Voyage a la Recherche de La PSrouse, t. ii. p. 322. 



f Bericht uber die Verhandl. der Akad. d. Wiss. zu Berlin aus 

 dem J. 1848, s. 222225. 



t Voy. d la Rech. de La Perouse, t. ii. p. 205. 



See Ehrenberg, Ueber das unsichtbar wirkende organiche Leben, 

 1842, s. 41. 



