338 EAMBLES OF A NATUEALIST. [Ch. XX. 



crowded with patients, who exhibit every phase of medical 

 as well as surgical lesion, and are in large numbers skilfully 

 treated by Dr. Kerr. 



Much has been said about the diet of the Chinese, and 

 the strange articles which occasionally enter into it. Kice 

 is undoubtedly the staple of their food, although they often 

 indulge in some small quantity of animal food in addition, 

 if they can afford it. It is a very common thing to see a 

 Chinaman carrying home his dinner or his supper in the 

 shape of a little fish — perhaps two if they are very small ; 

 or a minute pork chop dangling at the end of a piece of 

 grass ; in either case the morsel beiog such that an English 

 labourer would swallow it at a single mouthful. Pork is 

 undoubtedly their favourite meat, and pigs are kept in great 

 numbers, and always form an integral portion of the popula- 

 tion of a Chinese village. They are great, ugly, hollow- 

 backed, black animals, their bellies sweeping the ground as 

 they wander about in search of food, as to the quality or 

 natui'e of which they are not at all particular. In fact they 

 are literally omnivorous, and no one who has watched their 

 habits could eat them xmless he were either a Chinaman, or 

 were starving. These domestic pigs are believed to Jbe 

 derived from the stock of the Sus leucostymax (Temm.) of 

 Japan. In country places the Chinese are by no means 

 nice, eating everything that is eatable, and when by the 

 sea-side, living, as I have elsewhere observed, on shell-fish 

 of aU kinds with little or no distinction. Like the French 

 too they eat frogs, and in Formosa I partook of that deli- 

 cacy " as in France " — the species eaten in this being Eana 

 tigrina. I also had offered me there a freshwater turtle 

 (Trionyx sinensis) for the larder. But in a large place like 

 Canton, other articles are included in the bill of fare, to 



