HOLMES ANNIVERSARY VOLUME 



four days. All the time the girls are working with it they expectorate 

 into it, even after it has been strained into the large pot." 



These instances have had to do with beverages. The late Mrs 

 Matilda Coxe Stevenson 1 reports a custom of pre-ptyalization of a 

 food of more general use than the case we have cited of Polynesian 

 infants and pigeons. The fruit of Yucca baccata is chewed, set into 

 bowls and left over night; it is then cooked and stirred without the 

 addition of water; when cold it is made into pats and sun-dried for 

 three days upon the roof; at the expiration of this period the pats 

 are worked by hand into rolls a foot long and roughly three and a 

 half inches in diameter and sun-dried for from five to ten days. These 

 conserves are kept until needed; when used they are crumbled into 

 water until quite dissolved. The implication is that this soup is used 

 for food and not as a social beverage. 



Peasant mothers in Bavaria have the custom of holding in their 

 own mouths for a brief space a quantity of the thick soups common 

 in their diet and then passing it into the mouths of their suckling 

 children. The period of such retention need not be long, for the action 

 of the enzyme of the saliva is almost instantaneous. 



Our authorities give us a wide range of choice as to the intoxi- 

 cating properties of the kava. Reinecke describes it as a harmless, 

 refreshing drink; Turner (Samoa 113), carrying along the missionary 

 attitude of mind toward all things enjoyable, calls it "an intoxicating 

 draught"; even so thoughtful an observer as S. Percy Smith (Niue 

 Dictionary s.v.) calls it a slightly intoxicating drink. The question 

 is of sufficient importance to call for more detailed consideration. 

 Such a ceremony as is presented in the opening of this paper is 

 carried out in about half an hour from the first offering of the kava 

 to the emptying of the bowl, and of this period not so much as twenty 

 minutes is occupied in the preparation of the drink. In case the root 

 is brayed the infusion carries starch cells and starch granules in sus- 

 pension or possibly in an emulsion, the water being normally at a 

 temperature of 70 F. In case the root is chewed, the infusion dis- 

 solves the sugar ptyalization-product of starch. In either case the 

 infusion is ingested so promptly that there can be no time for further 

 fermentation. It is clear, therefore, that no alcohol has been produced 

 and that whatever systemic effect, immediate or through habitua- 

 tion, is produced is due solely to the two resins and the possible alka- 

 loid. We have indigenous authority, carried on by the missionaries, 

 that extended inordinate use of kava produces an inflammation of 



1 Ethnobotany of the Zuni Indians, Thirtieth Annual Report Bureau of American Ethnology, 72. 



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