182 MAN NATURALLY OMNIVOROUS. 



the rudest barbarism be the most natural state of man^ the 

 New Hollanders and the inhabitants of Van Dieman's 

 Land, arc the most unexceptionable specimens ; raised, and 

 but just raised, above the level of brutes. These savages 

 are very thinly scattered, in small numbers, and at wide 

 intervals, along the coasts of the great austral continent ; 

 and derive their support from the sea. They are not, how- 

 ever, pure ichthyph agists, as they sometimes get a kangaroo, 

 a bird, or a few roots, and sometimes the large larvje of an 

 insect from the bark of the dwarf gum-tree (eucalyptus 

 resinifera) : sometimes they mix their roots with ants, and 

 their lava into a paste *. 



The individuals, whom we send to New South Wales, 

 are not the best specimens of our iron age, yet they are 

 far beyond these children of nature, in physical and moral 

 attributes. 



The Greenlanders, the Kurilian and Aleutian islanders, 

 the wandering hordes of Asia, and the hunting tribes of 

 North America, are perhaps too much civilized to be admit- 

 ted as examples of natural man : they are all carnivorous. 



If the practices of savage and barbarous people are to 

 be the criterion, we must deem it natural to eat earth, 

 " The Ottomaques," says Humboldt f, " on the banks of 

 the Meta and the Orinoco, feed on a fat unctious earth, or 

 a species of pipe-clay, tinged with a little oxyd of iron. 

 They collect this clay very carefully, distinguishing it by 

 the taste: they knead it into balls of four or six inches in 

 diameter, which they bake slightly before a slow fire. 

 Whole stacks of such provisions are seen piled up in tlieir 

 huts. These clods are soaked in water, when about to be 

 used ; and each individual eats about a pound of the mate 



* Collins' Account of the English Colony in New South Wales ; Ap- 

 pendix, No. 4. Their habitations, if that rame be deemed applicable 

 to a hole in a tree or rock, or to a piece of bark stripped from a single 

 tree, bent and laid on the ground ; and the rest of their domestic and 

 social economy, as pourtrayed in the same work, arc quite in unison v,\lh 

 their bill of fare. 



+ Tab. Phys. dcs Regions Equatorialcs' 



