8 ANIMAL FOOD RESOURCES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



but as far as Englishmen are concerned, a due mixture 

 of vegetable and animal matter is not only most palat- 

 able, but most conducive to health. 



Let us briefly take a preliminary glance at some of 

 the various articles which different people relish. Be- 

 sides the local peculiarities of the vegetable and animal 

 foods which are most abundant and attainable, we have 

 the influence of those instinctive appetites for particular 

 articles of food, which certainly exist, however difficult 

 of explanation they may be. Keligious or superstitious 

 usages are also most important factors in the result in 

 many instances, although they will not always serve to 

 explain the abstention from certain perfectly wholesome 

 and nutritious foods, or the consumption of absolutely 

 noxious or useless materials like clay. — Professor 

 Church's " Food." 



Sir George Grey, in his " Travels in Australia," gives 

 a graphic account of the food of the Australians, and 

 particularly tells us of the feast of a whole tribe on a 

 stranded whale. " It was a sorry sight (he says) to see 

 a pretty young woman entering the belly of the whale, 

 then gorging herself with blubber, and issuing forth 

 anointed from head to foot, and bearing in each hand a 

 trophy of the delicacy in question." 



A young lady of the Sandwich Islands, even now, will 

 swallow half a dozen raw mackerel for breakfast, without 

 the smallest inconvenience to herself. 



Sir E. Belcher, in a visit to some Esquimaux at Icy 

 Cape, found the winter store room under the floor of 

 their yourt or den, pretty well supplied with a mixture 

 of reindeer, whale, walrus, seal, swans, ducks, etc., but 

 none fresh. It was frozen into a solid mass beneath^ but 

 loose from those on the surface, and seemed to be incor- 

 porated by some unexplained process into a gelatinous 

 snow, which they scraped up easily with the liand, and 

 ate with satisfaction, fish and oil predominating. It was 

 not offensive or putrid. How many years the frozen 

 mass may have remained there he could not determine. 



In North America, fish eyes, the roes of salmon, and 



