EATING FOR WARMTH 275 



long day's toil. He needs little ; but when he can get it 

 he will eat heavily, they say. 



Northern people have the trick of eating for two pur- 

 poses warmth and aliment. The Eskimo consumes enor- 

 mous quantities of blubber, but the bulk of it goes to keep 

 alive the fire in the human stove, without which he would 

 freeze to death. The good half or more of what we North- 

 ern Europeans eat is from an inherited tendency to " shovel 

 in coal ;" only a small part is assimilated for nourishment ; 

 and we carry the trick of eating wherever we go liver or 

 no liver. But so much is not essential in a hot climate, 

 and the native population learns to live on a quantity (to- 

 say nothing of quality) which to us would be the shortest 

 of commons. I have never been able to reduce the av- 

 erage food consumed by the Oriental to ounces ; but com- 

 pared, say with our army ration, I fancy it would be less 

 than half the weight, perhaps less than a third. At the 

 same time, when food can be had, the Oriental will vie 

 with his Occidental brother in eating ; and the rich are 

 often notorious gluttons. The poor make a virtue of ne- 

 cessity. 



There is a curious fact bearing on this stoking theory 

 which is well known among the lumbermen in our Eastern 

 States. The capacity of the horses they use out in camp 

 to keep warm is gauged by the amount they can eat and di- 

 gest. They are mostly small horses, but tough and rugged 

 creatures, of " Morgan " pattern. Unless a horse will eat 

 up clean a full bucket of oats three times a day, he is con- 

 sidered useless for this work. He will " starve with cold," 

 and they send him back to the settlements w^here he can 

 be blanketed. More than half he consumes goes through 

 his system merely to supply carbon to warm him ; his di- 

 gestive apparatus assimilates such part as is needed for 

 alimentation. The Indian pony worries through the winter 



