WILD ANIMALS AS A SOURCE OF FOOD 211 



the same spots, as is evident from the piles of old shells, which 

 must often amount to many tons in weight. . . . These poor 

 wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous faces 

 daubed with white paint, their skins filthy and greasy, their 

 hair entangled, their voices discordant, and their gestures violent. 

 Viewing such men, one can hardly make one's self believe that 

 they are fellow- creatures, and inhabitants of the same world. 

 It is a common subject of conjecture what pleasure in life some 

 of the lower animals can enjoy. How much more reasonably 

 the same question may be asked with respect to these bar- 

 barians! At night, five or six human beings, naked, and scarcely 

 protected from the wind and rain of this tempestuous climate, 

 sleep on the wet ground, coiled up like animals. Whenever 

 it is low water, winter or summer, night or day, they must rise 

 to pick shell-fish from the rocks; and the women either dive 

 to collect sea-eggs, or sit patiently in their canoes and, with a 

 baited hair-line without any hook, jerk out little fish. If a seal 

 is killed, or the floating carcase of a putrid whale discovered, it 

 is a feast; and such miserable food is assisted by a few tasteless 

 berries and fungi." 



WILD ANIMALS AS A SOURCE OF FOOD 



MAMMALS (MAMMALIA). The large majority of the members 

 of this class, from the Spiny Ant- Eater (Echidna) and the Duck- 

 Bill (Ornitkorkynchus) of Australia up to Man, are, or have been, 

 used as food. As to the two first, it will be seen from the 

 following remarks made by Semon (in In the Australian Bush) 

 in regard to Queensland, that even uncivilized races have 

 marked preferences in the matter of diet, when not under stress 

 of famine: " My blacks were hardly able to furnish me with 

 any information as to the customs of this animal, i.e. the Duck- 

 Bill, which they called * Jungjumore ', for they despise its flesh, 

 and consequently never hunt it. In fact, it has an * ancient and 

 fish-like smell ', even after it has been skinned. The blacks 

 showed utter contempt for 'Jungjumore', and could hardly be 

 brought to help me in digging up their burrows or to trouble 

 themselves in any way about this, to their minds, useless and 

 inferior creature. The taste for Echidna is quite the reverse, 

 since their regard for it amounts almost to adoration, and they 



