5б ANIMAL FOOD J CATTLE. 



ing, they dip the middle finger of the right hand 

 into the cup and flick off the adhering drops.^ 



They eat with their fingers, which are always 

 disgustingly dirty ; raising a large piece of meat 

 and seizing it in their teeth, they cut off with a knife, 

 close to the mouth, the portion remaining in the 

 hand. The bones are licked clean, and sometimes 

 cracked for the sake of the marrow ; the shoulder- 

 blade of mutton is always broken and thrown aside, 

 it being considered unlucky to leave it unbroken. 



On special occasions they eat the flesh of goats 

 and horses ; beef rarely, and camels' flesh more rarely 

 still. The lamas will touch none of this meat, but 

 have no objection to carrion, particularly if the dead 

 animal is at all fat. They do not habitually eat 

 bread, but they will not refuse Chinese loaves, and 

 sometimes bake wheaten cakes themselves. Near 

 the Russian frontier they will even eat black bread, 

 but further in the interior they do not know what it 

 is, and those to whom we gave rusks, made of rye- 

 flour, to taste, remarked that there was nothing nice 

 about such food as that, which only jarred the 

 teeth. 



Fowl or fish they consider unclean, and their 

 dislike to them is so great that one of our guides 

 nearly turned sick on seeing us eat boiled duck at 

 Koko-nor; this shows how relative are the ideas of 

 people even in matters which apparently concern the 

 senses. The very Mongol, born and bred amid 



' Thib is one of the ancient Mongol practices. Sec ' Marco Polo,' 

 and cd., i. p. 300. — V^ 



