FOOD. 63 



" The inhabitants of Kamischatka and many other shores 

 scarcely any other than fish. 



" The shepherds in the province of Caraccas in South America,, 

 on the banks of the Orinoko f , and even the Morelachs s in Eu- 

 rope, live almost entirely on flesh. 



" Some barbarous nations devour raw animals. This cannot be 

 denied to have formerly been the case with the Samojedes h , the 

 Esquimaux 1 , and some tribes of South America. k 



" Other nations are no less remarkable in their drink. 



" The inhabitants of many intertropical islands, especially in the 

 Pacific Ocean, can procure no sweet water, and instead of it drink 

 the juice of cocoa-nuts. 



" Others take only sea-water; and innumerable similar facts 

 clearly prove man to be omnivorous." 



It appears that matter, as in the case of water, which has never 

 belonged to an animated system, is calculated to afford nourish- 



made a pigeon live on flesh, and an eagle on bread. (Experiences sur la Diges- 

 tion, c. Ixxiv. c. Ixxv.) If fresh- water mollusca are put at once into sea water, 

 or sea-water mollusca into fresh water, they perish ; but if the change is gradually 

 made, they live very well. ( AnncJ.es de Chimie et de Physique, vol. ii. p. 32. 181 6. ) 

 A spider has fed upon sulphate of zinc. (Thomson's Anncds of Philosophy, 

 vol. xii. p. 454.) We have seen that the Otomacs eat little else some months of 

 the year than large quantities of earth, and that some brutes devour earth. I may 

 here add that not only the Otomacs are so fond of it, as, when well supplied with 

 food, to take a little, but that many nations of the torrid zone have a propensity 

 to geophagism. The negroes of Guinea, the Javanese, the New Caledonians, 

 and many South American tribes, eat clay as a luxury ; and the Guajeroes, on 

 the west of Rio da la Hache, carry a little box of lime as sailors do a tobacco-box. 

 German workmen at the mountain of Kiffhonser spread clay instead of butter on 

 their bread, and call it stein butter, and find it very satisfying and easy of diges- 

 tion. The Otomacs do not suffer by the practice, but in some tribes the people 

 grow sick and thin by indulging too freely in this luxury. Africans who geo- 

 phagised with impunity at home on a yellow clay, severely suffer from it in the 

 West Indies. (See also Dr. John Hunter, Diseases of the Army in Jamaica, 

 p. 248. sqq.) The red clay eaten in Java destroys the appetite and wastes the 

 body. 



f " Fil. Salv. Gily, Saggio diStoria Americana, vol. iv. p. 120." 

 E " Gius. Ant. Pujati, Reflessioni sul Vita Pitagorico. Feltri, 1751, 4to." 

 h *' De Klingstaedt, Mem. sur les Samojedes et les Lappons. 1762, 8vo." 

 4 " Curtis, Phil. Trans, vol.lxiv. p. ii. p. 381. 383." 



* " J. Winter, in Hakluyt's Principal Navigations of the English Nation, vol. iii. 

 p. 751." 



