30 THE UNIVERSE. 



CHAPTER III. 



FOSSIL MEAL AND THE EARTH-EATERS. 



IN several parts of the world the dearth of sources of 

 food compels men to nourish themselves with certain kinds 

 of earth which actually possess a nutritive power. 



Travellers are too unanimous on this point to allow of our 

 doubting it. The fact too was known at a far more distant 

 epoch than is generally supposed, for it is mentioned in the 

 old and curious book of Naude in the defence of the great 

 men accused of magic. It is there said that certain earths 

 of the valley of Hebron are good to eat. 



Towards the mouth of the Orinoco, the Ottomacs, at cer- 

 tain seasons of the year, nourish themselves to a great ex- 

 tent with a fat ferruginous clay, of which they consume as 

 much as a pound and a half a day. Spix and Martius say 

 that a similar custom is found on the banks of the Amazon ; 

 and those learned travellers relate that the natives there 

 eat this earth even when there is no lack of more nutri- 

 tive food. We know also that an edible clay is sold in 

 the markets of Bolivia ; and lastly, Gliddon assures us that 

 there are a tolerably large number of earth-eating tribes 

 in North America, mentioning in particular the negroes 

 of the Carolinas and Florida. 



Naturalists, struck with these accounts, were eager to 

 make out the composition of these edible earths, and to 

 their astonishment discovered that some of them were noth- 

 ing else than different kinds of tripolis, or clays, containing 



