VORACITY. 59 



an ox with a blow of his fist, and devoured it; and the fellow 

 mentioned in a thesis published at Wittemberg in 1757, who once, 

 in the presence of the senate, ate up a sheep, a sucking-pig, and 

 sixty pounds of plums, stones and all, and could carry four men 

 a whole league upon his shoulders. 



Voracity is of course sometimes, like depraved appetite, as in 

 chlorosis and pregnancy, but temporary, and referable to merely 

 disordered function. Dr. Satterly details the case of a lad in 

 whom, while labouring under typhus with marked inflammation in 

 the head, the exacerbations of fever were accompanied by such 

 hunger, that he ate every day four regular meals, each sufficient 

 for the stoutest labourer's dinner, and many pounds of dry bread, 

 biscuit, and fruit between them. He had no sooner finished a 

 meal than he denied having tasted any thing, 



" cibus omnis in illo, 



Causa cibi est, seraperque locus fit inanis edendo," 



and would suck and bite the bed-clothes or his fingers? if refused 

 more, cared nothing about the quality of what he ate, would pass 

 six or seven large solid motions a day by means of physic, and 

 ultimately recovered.*! The stomach here executed its office with 

 excessive rapidity, and was too soon empty again. 



To show how some animals differ from us in the demand for 

 food, I may mention that the ant-lion will exist without the 

 smallest supply of food, apparently uninjured, for six months ; 

 though, when he can get it, he will daily devour an insect of his 

 own size. A spider has lived without food under a sealed glass 

 for ten months, and at the end of that time appeared as vigorous 

 as ever. Reptiles have often lived upwards of a century enclosed 

 in trees or stones. 



On the other hand, herbivorous larvee, as caterpillars, (for in- 

 sects are carnivorous, herbivorous, and omnivorous, like their 

 superiors,) will eat twice their weight of food daily. r 



P Ovid's account of Erisichthon is verified in many histories of voracity : 



" Ipse suos artus lacero divellere morsu 



Ccepit; et infelix minuendo corpus alebat." Metam. lib. viii, 



<i Transactions of the Royal College of Physicians, London, vol. v. 



See also Phil. Trans. Papers read 1745; and Abridgment, vol. iii. p. 111. 



r Kirby and Spence, Entomology, p. 398. sq. 



