It Is Known That Great Use Is Still Made In The East Of The Bolar And Sigillated Earths Of Lemnos, Which Are Clay Mingled With Oxide Of Iron.

In Germany the workmen employed in the quarries of sandstone worked at the mountain of Kiffhauser spread a very fine clay upon their bread, instead of butter, which they call steinbutter* (stone-butter).

(* This steinbutter must not be confounded with the mountain butter (bergbutter) which is a saline substance, produced by a decomposition of aluminous schists.)

The state of perfect health enjoyed by the Ottomacs during the time when they use little muscular exercise, and are subjected to so extraordinary a regimen, is a phenomenon difficult to be explained. It can be attributed only to a habit prolonged from generation to generation. The structure of the digestive apparatus differs much in animals that feed exclusively on flesh or on seeds; it is even probable that the gastric juice changes its nature, according as it is employed in effecting the digestion of animal or vegetable substances; yet we are able gradually to change the regimen of herbivorous and carnivorous animals, to feed the former with flesh, and the latter with vegetables. Man can accustom himself to an extraordinary abstinence and find it but little painful if he employ tonic or stimulating substances (various drugs, small quantities of opium, betel, tobacco, or leaves of coca); or if he supply his stomach, from time to time, with earthy insipid substances that are not in themselves fit for nutrition. Like man in a savage state some animals, when pressed by hunger in winter, swallow clay or friable steatites; such are the wolves in the northeast of Europe, the reindeer and, according to the testimony of M. Patrin, the kids in Siberia. The Russian hunters, on the banks of the Yenisei and the Amour, use a clayey matter which they call rock-butter, as a bait. The animals scent this clay from afar, and are fond of the smell; as the clays of bucaro, known in Portugal and Spain by the name of odoriferous earths (tierras olorosas), have an odour agreeable to women.* (* Bucaro (vas fictile odoriferum). People are fond of drinking out of these vessels on account of the smell of the clay. The women of the province of Alentejo acquire a habit of masticating the bucaro earth; and feel a great privation when they cannot indulge this vitiated taste.) Brown relates in his History of Jamaica that the crocodiles of South America swallow small stones and pieces of very hard wood, when the lakes which they inhabit are dry, or when they are in want of food. M. Bonpland and I observed in a crocodile, eleven feet long, which we dissected at Batallez, on the banks of the Rio Magdalena, that the stomach of this reptile contained half-digested fish, and rounded fragments of granite three or four inches in diameter. It is difficult to admit that the crocodiles swallow these stony masses accidentally, for they do not catch fish with their lower jaw resting on the ground at the bottom of the river. The Indians have framed the absurd hypothesis that these indolent animals like to augment their weight, that they may have less trouble in diving. I rather think that they load their stomach with large pebbles to excite an abundant secretion of the gastric juice. The experiments of Majendie render this explanation extremely probable. With respect to the habit of the granivorous birds, particularly the gallinaceae and ostriches, of swallowing sand and small pebbles, it has been hitherto attributed to an instinctive desire of accelerating the trituration of the aliments in a muscular and thick stomach.

We have mentioned that tribes of Negroes on the Gambia mingle clay with their rice. Some families of Ottomacs were perhaps formerly accustomed to cause the maize and other farinaceous seeds to rot in their poya, in order to eat earth and amylaceous matter together: possibly it was a preparation of this kind, that Father Gumilla described indistinctly in the first volume of his work when he affirms that the Guamos and the Ottomacs feed upon earth only because it is impregnated with the sustancia del maiz (substance of maize) and the fat of the cayman. I have already observed that neither the present missionary of Uruana, nor Fray Juan Gonzales, who lived long in those countries, knew anything of this mixture of animal and vegetable substances with the poya. Perhaps Father Gumilla has confounded the preparation of the earth which the natives swallow with the custom they still retain (of which M. Bonpland acquired the certainty on the spot) of burying in the ground the beans of a species of mimosacea,* (* Of the genus Inga.) to cause them to enter into decomposition so as to reduce them into a white bread, savoury, but difficult of digestion. I repeat that the balls of poya, which we took from the winter stores of the Indians, contained no trace of animal fat, or of amylaceous matter. Gumilla being one of the most credulous travellers we know, it almost perplexes us to credit facts which even he has thought fit to reject. In the second volume of his work he however gainsays a great part of what he advanced in the first; he no longer doubts that half at least (a lo menos) of the bread of the Ottomacs and the Guamos is clay. He asserts, that children and full grown persons not only eat this bread without suffering in their health, but also great pieces of pure clay (muchos terrones de pura greda.) He adds that those who feel a weight on the stomach physic themselves with the fat of the crocodile which restores their appetite and enables them to continue to eat pure earth.* (* Gumilla volume 2 page 260.) It is certain that the Guamos are very fond, if not of the fat, at least of the flesh of the crocodile, which appeared to us white, and without any smell of musk.

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