VOG HBEVALEHCE OE THE PBACTICE. 
/our of maize, oil of turtle’s eggs, or fat of the orecodile. 
We ourselves examined, both at the Orinoco and after our 
return to Paris, the balls of earth -which we brought away 
with us, and found no trace of the mixture of any organic 
substance, whether oily or farinaceous. The savage regards 
every thing as nourishing that appeases hunger: when, 
therefore, you inquire of an Ottomac on what he subsists 
during the two months when the river is at its highest flood 
he shows you his balls of clayey earth. This he calls his 
principal food at the period when he can seldom procure a 
lizard, a root of fern, or a dead fish swimming at the surface 
of the water. If necessity force the Indians to eat earth 
during two months (and from three quarters to five quarters 
of a pound in twenty-four hours), he eats it from choice 
during the rest of the year. Every day in the season of 
drought, when fishing is most abundant, he scrapes his balls 
of poi/a, and mingles a little clay with his other aliment. 
It is most surprising that the Ott'omacs do not become lean 
by swallowing such quantities of earth: they are, on the 
contrary, extremely robust. The missionary Pray Eamon 
Bueno asserts, that he never remarked any alteration in the 
health of the natives at the period of the great risings of the 
Orinoco. 
The Ottomans during some months eat daily three-quarters 
of a pound of clay slightly hardened by fire, but which they 
moisten before swallowing it. It has not been possible to 
verify hitherto with precision how much nutritious vegetable 
or animal matter they take in a week at the same time; but 
they attribute the sensation of satiety which they feel, to 
the clay, and not to the wretched aliments which they take 
with it occasionally. 
No physiological phenomenon being entirely insulated, it 
may be interesting to examine several analogous phenomena, 
which I have been able to collect. I observed everywhere 
within the torrid zone, in a great number of individuals, 
children, women, and sometimes even full-grown men, an 
inordinate and almost irresistible desire of swallowing earth; 
not an alkaline or calcareous earth, to neutralize (as it is said) 
acid juices, but a fat clay, unctuous, and exhaling a strong 
smell. It is often found necessary to tie the children’s 
hands or to confine them, to prevent their eating earth. 
