496 PREVALENCE OF THE PRACTICE. 



tfour of maize, oil of turtle's eggs, or fat of the crccodile. 

 We ourselves examined, both at the Orinoco and after our 

 return to Paris, the balls of earth which we brought away 

 with us, and found no trace of the mixture of any organic 

 substance, whether oily or farinaceous. The savage regards 

 every thing as nourishing that appeases hunger: when, 

 therefore, you inquire of an Ottomac on what he subsists 

 during the two months when the river is at its highest flood 

 he shows you his balls of clayey earth. This he calls his 

 principal food at the period when he can seldom procure a 

 lizard, a root of fern, or a dead fish swimming at the surface 

 of the water. If necessity forte the Indians to eat earth 

 during two months (and from three quarters to five quarters 

 of a pound in twenty-four hours), he eats it from choice 

 during the rest of the year. Every day in the season of 

 drought, when fishing is most abundant, he scrapes his balls 

 of poya, and mingles a little clay with his other aliment. 

 It is most surprising that the Ottomacs do not become lean 

 by swallowing such quantities of earth: they are, on the 

 contrary, extremely robust. The missionary Fray Ramon 

 Bueno asserts, that he never remarked any alteration in the 

 health of the natives at the period of the great risings of the 

 Orinoco. 



The Ottomacs during some months eat daily three-quarters 

 of a pound of clay slightly hardened by fire, but which they 

 moisten before swallowing it. It has not been possible to 

 verify hitherto with precision how much nutritious vegetable 

 or animal matter they take in a week at the same time; but 

 they attribute the sensation of satiety which they feel, to 

 the clay, and not to the wretched aliments which they take 

 with it occasionally. 



No physiological phenomenon being entirely insulated, it 

 may be interesting to examine several analogous phenomena, 

 which I have been able to collect. I observed everywhere 

 within the torrid zone, in a great number of individuals, 

 children, women, and sometimes even full-gr wn men, an 

 inordinate and almost irresistible desire of swallowing earth ; 

 not an alkaline or calcareous earth, to neutralize (as it is said) 

 acid juices, but a fat clay, unctuous, and exhaling a strong 

 smell. It is often found necessary to tie the children's 

 hamls or to confine them, to prevent their eating earth. 



