VOL. XIX. (3) 
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207 
palm a saline flour is extracted. He further suggests that the 
excessive use of peppers by certain Amazonian Indians may be 
due to lack of salt. This lack is in some lands the known 
cause of migrations. The salt in human blood (it has been 
suggested) may be one cause of the attraction of anthropophagy. 
According to Pliny, the uses of salt were, in his day, already 
exceedingly various ; in both medicine and in food. He 
alludes to bricks made of it which were imported from Cappa- 
docia. This reminds us that in the early eighteenth century 
tablets of salt still passed round as currency in certain of the 
Southern States of India. Herodotus knew of the Saharan 
rock-salt and its employment for building purposes. At Gerra, 
in Arabia, Pliny relates that both houses and towers were 
built of squared blocks of salt. The story of Lot’s wife and 
her cruel supposed doom for mere curiosity seems to hand 
on a geological story. We have a similar one at Hammam- 
Meskoutin, in Algeria. 
Salt, nevertheless, is not considered absolutely essential to 
daily life by a good many primitive tribes. The North 
American Indian eats meat rarely, and but little salt. Certain 
of the South African Namaqua-land (Herrero) tribes are 
altogether non-salt-eaters. Its needfulness may quite possibly 
be over-rated. We are reminded that one, Michel Tourant, 
died September 6th, 1734, aged g8, suffering from no in- 
firmities of old age, of whom it was especially averred that he 
had never taken salt. The Egyptians (it is well-known), 
hated salt and the sea also. The priests of Isis were forbidden 
to place salt upon the Table (Plut : De Iside 32). The 
mediaeval Devil is said to have loved no salt with his meat 
(Bodin). 
These, however, are marked, but few, exceptions. To 
them is opposed the universally high estimation of salt as a 
source or sustainer of health. Lycophron calls salt ^yvnrjs ” 
— the cleanser. The Vestal priestesses of the Forum covered 
their sacrificial cakes with it ; and these were, therefore, called 
' mola salsa,' or salted meal-cakes. The Vestals guarded the 
central Hearth of the Roman Goddess of Light, to whom all 
Mote. — On the Orinoco at Javita, the Indians incinerate the spadi.x and fruit of the Chimu 
palm-tree. In Madagascar the natives extract it from the sap of another palm. 
