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Show ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 159 jaunfi.tre) was, in 1751, sold secretly in the market in Martinique. "Les negre de Guinee disent que dans leur pays ils mangent habitucllement une certaine terre, dont le gout leur plait, sans en ~tre incommodes. Ceux qui sont uans l'abus de manger du Caouac en sont si friands qu'il n'y a pas de chatiment qui puisse less emp~cher de devorer de la terre." (Thibault de Chanvalon, Voyage ala Martinique, p. 85.) In the Island of Java, between Sarabaya and Samarang, Labillardiere saw small square reddish-colored cakes exposed for sale in the villages. The natives called them tana ampo (tanah, in Malay and Javanese, signifies earth). On examinatiOn and inquiry, he found that the cakes consisted of reddish clay, and that they were eaten. (Voyage U.la Recherche de la Perouse, t. ii. p. 322.) The edible clay of Samarang has recently been sent to Berlin by :Mohnike, in 1847, in the shape of rolled tubes, like cinnamon, and has been examined by Ehrenberg. It is a fresh water formation deposited on limestone, and consisting of microscopic Polygastrica, Gaillonella, Naviculas, and Phytolitharia. (Bericht tiber die Verhandl. der Akad. d. Wiss. zu Berlin, aus dem J. 1848, s. 222-225.) The inhabitants of New Caledonia, to appease their hunger, eat pieces as big as the fist of friable steatite, which V auquelin found to contain in addition no inconsiderable quantity of copper. (Voyage ala Recherche de la Perouse, t. ii. p. 205.) In Popayan, and several parts of Peru, calcareous earth is sold in the streets as an eatable for the Indians; it is used with Coca (the leaves of the Erythroxylon peruvianum). Thus we find the practice of eating earth diffused throughout the torrid zone, among indolent races inhabiting the finest and most fertile parts of the globe. But accounts have also come from the North, through Berzelius and Retzius, according to which, hundreds of cartloads of earth containing Infusoria are said to be annually consumed by the country people, in the most remote parts of Sweden, as breadmeal, and even more from fancy (like the smoking of tobacco) than from necessity ! In Finland, this kind of earth is occasionally mixed with the bread. It consists of empty shells of animalculre, so small and soft that they do not crunch perceptibly between the teeth; it fills the stomach, but gives no real nourishment. In periods of war, chronicles and documents preserved in archives of ten give intimation of earths containing Infusoria having --~--- - |