196 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



streets as an eatable for the Indians ; it is used with Coca 

 (the leaves of the Erythroxylon pemvianum.) Thus we find 

 the practice of eating earth diffused throughout the torrid ' 

 zone, among indolent races inhabiting the finest and most 

 fertile parts of the globe. But accounts have also come 

 from the North, through Berzelius and Betzius, according 

 to which, hundreds of cartloads of earth containing Infusoria 

 are said to be annually consumed by the country people, 

 in the most remote parts of Sweden, as breadmeal, and 

 even more from fancy (like the smoking of tobacco) than 

 from necessity ! In Finland this kind of earth is occasion- 

 ally mixed with the bread. It consists of empty shells of 

 animalculae, so small and soft that they do not crunch 

 perceptibly between the teeth; it fills the stomach, but 

 gives no real nourishment. In periods of war, chronicles 

 and documents preserved in archives often give intimation 

 of earths containing infusoria having been eaten ; speaking 

 of them under the vague and general name of " mountain 

 meal/' It was thus during the Thirty Years' War in 

 Pomerania (at Camin) ; in the Lausitz (at Muskau) \ and 

 in the territory of Dessau (at Klieken) ; and subsequently 

 in 1719 and 1733 at the fortress of Wittenberg. (See 

 Ehrenberg iiber das unsichtbar wirkende organische Leben, 

 1842, S. 41.) 



( 51 ) p. 25. " Figures graven on the rock" 



In the interior of South America, between the 2d and 

 4th degrees of North latitude, a forest-covered plain is 

 enclosed by four rivers, the Orinoco, the Atabapo, the B/io 



