110 ANIMAL FOOD EESOURCES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



epicures of Rome held the flesh of the Onager, or wild 

 ass, in the same estimation as we do venison. 



Cum tener est Onager, solaque lalisio matre 

 Pascitur ; hoc infans, sed breve nomen habet. 



Martial, xiii. 97. 



From a passage in Pliny (lib. viii., c. 44) it would ap- 

 pear that the Onager inhabited Africa; and that the 

 most delicate and best flavoured lalisiones, or fat foals, 

 were brought from that continent to the Roman markets. 

 Asses' milk is universally known and approved of as a 

 specific in many disorders. It is light, easy of digestion, 

 and highly nutritious. 



The Hottentots and other natives are very fond of the 

 Quagga {Eqims quagga, Lin.), the flesh of which, though 

 coarse, is eaten. 



Lieutenant Moodie ("Ten Years in South Africa") says 

 — " Being one morning at the house of a neighbouring 

 farmer who had just shot one of these animals, I re- 

 quested that he would have a piece of the flesh cooked 

 for my breakfast. His ' f row ' expressed some disgust at 

 my proposal, but ordered a small bit to be grilled, with 

 butter and pepper. I did not find it at all unpalatable, 

 and certainly it was better than horse-flesh." 



Capt. Burton, in his " Central Africa," says, " Of wild 

 flesh the favourite is that of the Zebra ; it is smoked 

 or jerked, despite which it retains a most savoury 

 flavour." 



Ruminants. — We come now to a better-known class of 

 food-yielding animals, the Ruminants. 



A writer in " The Farmer " well observes that " the 

 consumption of meat increases with the increase of popu- 

 lation, and in a higher ratio, as the world progresses in 

 civilization, it consumes more animal food, as the best 

 restorative of the daily exhaustion of bodily and mental 

 forces. Farinaceous food and feebleness occupy the same 

 zone. To get up and keep a good meat-appetite, man 

 must live and work several degrees from the Equator. 

 And in this truth the whole future meat question is con- 



