ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 193 



inquire from an Otoraac about his winter provision, (in 

 tropical South America the rainy season is usually called 

 winter), he points to the heap of clay balls stored in his hut. 

 But these simple facts by no means determine the questions, 

 whether the clay be really an alimentary substance ? whether 

 earths be capable of assimilation ? or whether they merely 

 serve to appease hunger by distending the stomach? I 

 cannot pretend to decide these questions. (Bel. hist. T. ii. 

 p. 618-620.) It is curious that the usually credulous and 

 uncritical Father Gumilla positively denies the earth-eating 

 as such. (Historia del Bio Orinoco, nueva impr. 1791, 

 T. i. p. 179.) He affirms that the balls of clay had maize- 

 meal and crocodile-fat mixed with them. But the mis- 

 sionary, Fray Bamon Bueno, and our friend and travelling 

 companion, the lay brother Fray Juan Gonzalez, who was 

 lost ut sea off the Coast of Africa with part of our collec- 

 tions, both assured us that the Otomacs never mix croco- 

 dile fat with the clay ; and of the meal said to be mixed with 

 it we heard absolutely nothing during our stay in Uruana. 

 The earth which we brought back with us, and which 

 Vauquelin analysed, is thoroughly pure and unmixed. May 

 Gumilla, by a confusion of things wholly distinct, have been 

 alluding to the preparation of bread from the long pod of a 

 kind of Inga, which is previously buried in the earth in order 

 to hasten the commencement of the first stage of decay ? 

 That the health of the Otomacs should not suffer from eating 

 so much earth appears to me particularly remarkable. Have 

 they become accustomed to it in the course of several 

 generations ? 



VOL. i. o 



