218 OF FOOD AND HUNGER. 



if the change is gradually made, they live very well ;* a spider 

 has lived upon sulphate of zinc ; f the Ottomans eat little else 

 than large quantities of baked earth some months of the year ; % 

 and indeed the negroes of Guinea, the Javanese, and wolves, 

 occasionally devour it. 



It appears that matter which has never belonged to an ani- 

 mated system is calculated to afford nourishment to animals in 

 some degree, but subordinately to matter which has belonged to 

 vegetables or animals, and that it alone will in some instances 

 support life for a time. Vegetables will indisputably live with 

 facility on such alone j and it has been contended that some ani- 

 mals, as fish, and vegetables, readdy subsist and grow on simple 

 water, but the experiments in support of this assertion are not 

 quite decisive. 



• 1. c. ij. 32. 1815. 



f Thomson's Annals of Philosophy, xij. 454. 



% Humboldt, Tableaux de la Nature. Vol. i. 



