180 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



Bruce, { appear perfect skeletons, and no wonder, 

 as they live upon such fare.'* Denham describes 

 a grass, whose seeds are eaten by the natives, that 

 would appear the most forbidding of all vegetables 

 capable of producing even the most scanty food. 

 ' The whole surface of the country,' he says, ' had 

 been covered with a grass which produced a calyx 

 so full of prickles as to annoy us almost to misery: 

 these prickles were of the finest and most penetrating 

 sharpness that can be imagined; they attached to 

 every part of our dress; and so small were the points 

 that it was impossible to extract them without their 

 breaking and leaving a part behind. If we walked, 

 at every step we were obliged to clear them from our 

 feet; mats, blankets, trowsers, were filled with these 

 irritating annoyances, so that there was no getting 

 rid of them by day or night. In short, no part of 

 the body was free from them. The seed from this 

 grass is called kaschia, and is eaten. '"j" 



Wild pulse have furnished food even to the inhab- 

 itants of England in times of scarcity. The SEA- 

 PEA is a native of this country, and, differs from 

 the other esculent peas in being a perennial, the root 

 penetrating deeply into the ground among stones 

 and sands by the sea-shores. During a famine in 

 the year 1555, the application of the seeds of this 

 plant as an article of food was most extensively and 

 efficaciously practised; according to Turner, thou- 

 sands of families were preserved in consequence. 

 It was found at that time growing in large quan- 

 tities on the coast of Suffolk; and in the superstitious 

 spirit of the age this seasonable relief was ascribed 

 to the interposition of a saint: the holy man must, 

 however, have been but an indifferent judge of vege- 

 tables, as the sea-pea is small, hard, and indigestible, 



* Travels, vol. iv, p. 511. 

 "t Denham's Travels in Africa, p. 56. 



