128 ANIMAL EOOD KESOURCES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



One of the most useful applications of buffalo meat 

 consists in the preparation of pemmican, an article of 

 food of the greatest importance from its portability and 

 nutritious qualities. This is prepared by cutting the lean 

 meat into thin slices, exposing it to the heat of the sun 

 or fire, and when dry, pounding it into a powder. It is 

 then mixed with an equal weight of buffalo suet and 

 stuffed into bladders. Sometimes venison is used instead 

 of buffalo meat. One bison cow in good condition fur- 

 nishes dried meat and fat enough to make a bag of pem- 

 mican weighing 90 pounds. 



Marine Mammak. — -The flesh of the whale has been 

 already alluded to as furnishing food to the natives in 

 many countries — New Zealand, Brazil, Japan, and espe- 

 cially the Arctic regions. In Barbados, when obtain- 

 able, the flesh of the hump-backed whale {Megaptera 

 A.mericana) is eaten by all classes, being preferred to beef, 

 which is there tough. The flesh of the whale is also 

 eaten in Tobago, St. Lucia, and the Grenadines. A 

 South Sea harpooner will tell you that, excepting the 

 delicacy of a draught of the yellow, creamy milk taken 

 from a freshly -speared she-whale, whale fins, properly 

 cooked, are the greatest of conceivable dainties. The 

 rank, rich, heat-producing flesh of the seal vies, in the 

 opinion of an Esquimaux, with the merits of l3lubber 

 cut from the flanks of a stranded whale. He will eat 

 the raw flesh of the whale with the same apparent 

 relish, when newly killed, or after it has been buried in 

 the ground for several months. 



^ There is no food more delicious to the taste of the 

 Esquimaux than the flesh of seals, and especially 

 that of the common seal {Phoca vituliiia). Whales 

 and walruses they capture when they come in their 

 way, bat the seal is their daily food. This animal 

 is as useful to them as the sheep to us. This 

 meat is so unlike the flesh to which Europeans are 

 accustomed, that it is not surprising that we should 

 have some difiiculty at first in making up our minds 

 to taste it; but when once that difficulty is over- 



