March 16, 1883.] 



KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



169 



describes all the pretty gelatine preparations of the table 

 as " calf's-foot jelly," is founded on the greater solubility of 

 the juvenile hoof, as compared to that of the adult ox or 

 horse, or to the parings of hides about to bo used by the 

 tanner. All these produce gelatine by boiling, the calves' 

 feet with comparatively little boiling. 



Besides these diflerences there are decided varieties, or, 

 I might say, species of gelatine, having slight dilTerences of 

 chemical composition and chemical relations. There is 

 Chomlrin, or cartilage gelatine, which is obtained by boiling 

 the cartilages of the ribs, larynx, or joints for eighteen or 

 twenty hours in water. Then there is Fibroin, obtained 

 by boiling spiders' webs and the silk of silkworms or other 

 caterpillars. These exist as a liquid inside the animal, 

 which solidifies on exposure. The libres of sponge contain 

 this modification of gelatine. 



Another kind is Chitiu, which constituted the animal 

 food of St John the Baptist, when he fed upon locusts and 

 wild honey. It is the basis of the bodily structure of 

 insects ; of the spiral tubes which permeate them throughout, 

 and are so wonderfully displayed when we examine insect 

 anatomy by aid of the microscope, also of their intestinal 

 canal, their external skeleton, scales, hairs, kc. It similarly 

 forms the true skeleton and bodily framework of crabs, 

 lobsters, shrimps, and other Crustacea, bearing the same 

 relation to their shells, muscles, ic, that ordinary gela- 

 tine does to the bones and softer tissues of the vertebrata ; 

 it is '■ the bone of their bones, and the flesh of their flesh." 

 It is ol)tainable by boiling these creatures down, but is 

 more difficult of solution than the ordinary gelatine of beef, 

 mutton, fish, and poultry. To this difficulty of solution in 

 the stomach, I suspect the nightmare that follows lobster 

 suppers. 



I once had an experience of the edibility of the shells of 

 a crustacean. When travelling, I always continue the 

 pursuit of knowledge in restaurants by ordering anything 

 that appears on the bill of fare that I have never heard of 

 before, or cannot translate or pronounce. At a Nea- 

 politan restaurant, I found " Cambers di Mare " on the 

 I'arta, which I translated " Leggy things of the sea," or sea- 

 creepers, and ordered them accordingly. They proved to 

 lie shrimps fried in their shells, and were very delicious — 

 like whitebait, but richer. The cbitin of the shells was 

 thus cooked to crispness, and no evil consequences follow-ed. 

 If reduced to locusts, I should, if possible, cook them in the 

 lune manner, and, as they have similar chemical composi- 

 tion, th-^y would doubtless be equally good. 



Should any epicurean reader desire to try this dish (the 

 duimps, I mean), he should fry them as they come from 

 file sea, not as they are sold by the fishmonger, these being 

 ■Iready boiled in salt water (usually in sea water) by the 

 dliimpers who catch them, the chitin being indurated 

 thereby. 



The introduction of fried and tinned locusts as an 

 epicurean delicacy would be a boon to suflering humanity, 

 by supplying industrial compensation to the inhabitants of 

 districts subject to periodical plagues of locust invasion. 

 The idea of eating them appears repiilsive atjirsi, so would 

 that of eating such creepy-crawly things as shrimps, if no 

 adventurous hero had made the first exemplary experiment. 

 Ohitin is chitin, whether elaborated on the land or secreted 

 ill the sea. The vegetarian locust and the cicala are free 

 from the pungent essential oils of the really unpleasant 

 cockchafer. 



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THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF MYTH. 



V. 

 By Edward Clodd. 

 "1 TTE said that language lays bare the mental condition 

 \ \ under which myths are formed ; in other words, 

 that speech reveals the limitations of thought And it 

 would be a useful corrective of theories concerning the 

 origin of language to which many are yet wedded to show 

 that not only terms for things material and concrete, but 

 also for things immaterial and abstract, are of purely 

 physical origin — that is to say, have been chosen from their 

 analogy to something real. As an example, the several 

 verbs whose relics survive in the substantive verb to be 

 had each a distinct physical meaning. "Am," "are," "is," 

 are derived from as (in Sanskrit asii, " life,"), meaning "to 

 breathe " or " sit " ; " was " and " were " from vas, 

 "abide"; and in "be" and " been " (from bnd, a San- 

 skrit cognate with Latin /u, Greek phi/, " to grow ")■ 

 are contained the idea of (/rowing. But to follow this 

 would take us from the main business of these pap rs ; 

 enough that, out of manifold combinations of a few inar- 

 ticulate or unjointed sounds, the larger proportion of which 

 were imitative, have arisen the languages of the world, 

 from the meagre stock of words of the unlearned and the 

 savage, to the noble and expanding vocabularies of educated 

 men. 



Passing to the facts upon whicli the solar theory of 

 myths rests, the following stands foremost The researches 

 of scholars, notably of the German Bopp and Jacob Grimm, 

 have shown that the languages spoken in Europe by the 

 Keltic, Teutonic, Slavonic, Greek, and Latin races, and in 

 Asia by the Hindus, Persian, and some lesser people, are 

 the common descendant?, under modifications through 

 various causes, of one mother- tongue known as the Aryan 

 (from a Sanskrit word cognate with the root ar to plough), 

 a term applied in the Vedas to the dominant occupiers of 

 the soil, the "tillers " in India, who spoke it The alx>ve 

 group of languages is also called the Indo Germanic, and, 

 with more appropriateness, as roughly defining the races 

 included therein, the Indo-European. Of course, wherever 

 the several branches of the old Aryan family finally 

 settled, they mixed more or less with the aboriginal races, 

 whom they conquered. But, making such allowances as 

 this demands, it holds good that people to-day, so unlike in 

 complexion, physique, colour of hair, and speech, as the 

 Hindoo and the Icelander, the Piussian and the English- 

 man, the Persian and the German, are the oflspring of 

 common ancestors, of whom, although no material relics sur- 

 vive, language remains to attest what considerable advance 

 from primitive savagery they had made. Wave after wave 

 of immigrants, among the earliest being the Kelt, followed 

 one another westward, to wrestle for the fairest lands ; so 

 that when, centuries later, the veteran legions of Ca'sar 

 er-ssed swords with tlie Belg;e in this island, they fought 

 against men remotely kin to themselves both in language 

 and in blood. 



Furthermore, the evidence which has yielded this most 

 interesting fact also shows that the old Aryans, before 

 they separated into tribes, each of varying dialect, had a 

 common mythology. This, which had its source, as myth 

 everywhere had, in man's endeavour to interpret the 

 meaning of his surroundings, had developed into a deifica- 

 tion of the powers of nature, and likewise become the 

 groundwork of traditional history, as well as the source of 

 legend, folk-lore, and folk tale. So venerable are these 

 last-named in their antiquity, that the nursery stories told 

 in Iceland and in the 'Tyrol, in the Highlands and in the 

 Deccan, are identical After allowing for local colouring. 



