Greeks feasted so much on their grasshoppers as to distinguish critically their different flavours.* Locusts are highly valued and dressed in various ways by the Arabs,† and are not less precious to several other nations. But if they be so pleasant as an English clergyman thought, some future age may welcome their visit, and grind, salt, boil, stew, or fry them as soon as they begin to devour or to attack the vegetable harvest. They will then add to our food instead of diminishing it. The convertibility of animal matter to nutritious subsistence appears to be bounded only by the use of it. Whatever any people are not in the habit of feeding on is either unsalutary or unpalatable to them. But, whatever they accustom themselves to, they seem then to like and to thrive with. Thus, what we use only in besieged towns, when famine begins its ravages, stewed hides, is a regular food in some parts of Africa; and the skin of fish, to us so indigestible by the strongest stomach, is the allotted food of children elsewhere.|| So the hippopotamus, which Lander rejected, and which would have been insalubrious to him, was delightsome to his negro attendants, who had frequently feasted on it. T

But, amid all these diversities, mankind seem to have agreed New South Wales, the natives eat snakes, but not unless killed by themselves, lest it should have bitten itself, and thereby become poisonous." * From Atheneus and Aristophanes we learn "that the Grecians thought grasshoppers most delicious in their pupa state; that the male ones were at first the best, and that the females, with their eggs, were very pleasant."-Kirby, 305.

"Mr. Walpole mentions that the Arabs are as much astonished at our eating crabs, lobsters, and oysters, as we are at their eating locusts." -Dr. Clarke's Travels, vol. i., p. 187. The Arabs grind them and mix them with flour; at other times they boil them, or stew them.

"The Hottentots fatten on them, and make soup of their eggs. The Mahrattas salt them. Mr. Jackson, in 1799, found them preferred by the Moors to pigeons. A person may eat, it seems, two or three hundred of them, boiled and fried, with salt and pepper, and a little vinegar. The Rev. Mr. Sheppard tried some, and found them excellent."-Kirby, Eut., p. 304.

Lander met with stewed buffalo hides in the African regions he visited. il At Kotzebue Sound, "We noticed, that at their meals they stripped the dried fish of its skin, and gave it to the women and children, who ate it very contentedly, while the men regaled themselves upon the flesh." -Captain Beechey, vol. i., p. 454.

In the Isle of Gungo, on the Niger, with some boiled corn and fish, about ten pounds of the flesh of the hippopotamus were sent us. This being nearly all fat, we could not fancy it, and gave it to our people. They assured us it was the finest meat they had ever tasted. It forms a principal part of the food of the natives."-Lander, vol. iii., p. 20.

in one point, and that is, to prefer the animals of all sorts that live on vegetation to those which feed on each other. There is a rankness of taste attending the flesh that is nourished by flesh, which is universally offensive to every state of society. The carnivorous are, therefore, generally avoided, though, as far as nutriment is concerned, they may be quite as serviceable as the herbivorous and graminivorous classes.

It is obvious, from this catalogue of the diversities of human food, that they are all matters of choice, and not of necessity. They have been adopted, or, at least, continued, from individual taste, and not from want or starvation. The European approbation of them is an evidence that they are so much actual addition to the existing means of human subsistence; and, therefore, let us multiply to what number we may, as long as there are any classes of the animal kingdom on the earth, mankind cannot starve. What they can eat for pleasure they may also eat for its utility. Even raw flesh, where

it is still used, is eaten in that state because the taste of it is liked; for, in some islands, raw flesh is served up with several cooked meats.* But nothing is more capricious than our use of the two senses of smell and taste, for we find seals preferred by some to turtle ;t even such men as Göethe and Schiller had peculiarities in their olfactory sensations, which

* In Hawaii, at the head governor's breakfast, "a number of his fa vourite chiefs sat in circles on the floor, around large dishes of raw fish, and baked hog or dog, from which each helped himself without ceremony."-Ellis's Tour, p. 42. At Macquarie, in New South Wales, "their food is always eaten in a raw state;" the reason they give for this is, that, if roasted, "it would become dry, like a waddy," or one of their clubs.

Captain Beechey, when at Kamschatka, "presented the governor with three large turtles, which they had never seen before. His cook converted them into excellent soup, some of which was sent round to each of the respectable inhabitants; but several declared their preference for their own dishes, made of seals' flesh."-Beechey's Voyage, vol. ii., p. 243.

Dr. Vogel, in his account of Göethe, gives this account of Schiller's liking the evaporation of rotten apples. "The following I had from Goethe himself: One day he went to pay a visit to Schiller; but, not finding him at home, he took a seat near his library table, waiting for his return. Here, at first, a peculiar smell became troublesome to him, and soon after that he fell into a state of insensibility, from which he did not recover until he was carried into the open air. The cause of all this they discovered to be a large quantity of rotten apples which Schiller, from a fondness for the air developed from them, had stowed in the drawers of his table." Of the same eminent man Lord Byron told Mr. Willis, "that he used to compose with his feet in a pail of cold water,

one may as much wonder at as to find such a civilized nation as the Chinese devouring what we should term nauseous garbage, though its nutritive effects may equal those of the most delicate food. The most deplorable and degraded peculiarity of any portion of the human race in their eating, has been that of making banquets on their own species.t

The Divine instructions given to mankind as to their food were those communicated to Noah, and through Moses to the Jewish nations. By the first, all that moved with life, and,

with a pot of hot coffee at his elbow."-New Monthly Mag., 1832, p. 296.

Göethe's eccentricity was a love of the confined air and smell of a close room. "It was with difficulty that he could be induced to have a window opened for airing his study and sleeping room. An offensive smell he did not particularly mind. He also felt much vexed if any one snuffed the candle in his presence; nobody could perform this operation to please him. He became exceedingly displeased if either book or paper did not lie with its edges parallel to the corresponding edge of the table."-Dr. Vogel's Account-his confidential physician.

"The extremes of luxury and misery are nowhere more ludicrously contrasted than in China." The rich buy, at a great price, the edible birds' nests, and highly value shark-fins, dried, and the bèche de la mer, a black-looking seaslug from the Pacific Islands. By the poorer, "the heads of fowls, their entrails, their feet, and every scrap of digestible matter, earth-worms, sea reptiles, and other vermin, are greedily devoured. We have noticed lots of black frogs, in half dozens tied together, exposed for sale in shallow troughs of water. We have seen the hind-quarter of a horse hung up in a butcher's shop. A lodger in a hotel complains that his bedroom being over the kitchen, he is grievously annoyed in a morning by the noises of dogs and cats which are slaughtering below for the day's consumption."-Missionary Voyages, 1832.

"But

† Cannibalism is so abhorrent to all who are not in the savage state, that the mind, from its desire to disbelieve it, struggles against the evidence of its existence. But the authentic testimonies to its practice in Polynesia, New Holland, and in some of the East Indian Islands, and elsewhere, are too numerous and coinciding to be discredited. One of the latest proofs of the practice sill continuing even in New Zealand, into which Christianity and its civilization are beginning to obtain an entrance, occurs in Mr. Wood's letter from Kawia there, of 10th July, 1835. gross darkness pervades the minds of thousands who are, from time to time, actually destroying and devouring each other. I had an opportunity of beholding a most disgusting spectacle the other day. A party from Waipa was returning from Taranake, about eighty miles distant, where they had been to fight, and where many poor creatures had been cut off, roasted, and eaten; and some of their flesh was brought away, and distributed as presents among their friends. However revolting this may appear to your feelings, and to the feelings of Christianized and civilized people, I assure you it is a fact. I saw the head of a great chief named Ta Guntu, whose body had been eaten on their way home. This was exhibited as a trophy of their conquest."-Wesleyan Miss. Rep., 1836, p. 21.

therefore, all orders of the animal kingdom,* were given as meat to the human race, to be used as freely as vegetable food. This general appointment of every living thing to be nutritive substance, left it wholly to individual taste and choice as to what kind or classes of animated nature each population or person would select and use. None are therefore censurable for any particular habits in this respect except the cannibals. The whole was given to man for his sustenance, and therefore, we may say, provided for him. No restriction or prohibition was placed on any part as to the world at large, except that the blood was forbidden to be eaten with the flesh.† But as to the Jewish nation, a series of counselling precepts were given by the Deity, through Moses, to them, as to what animals they should abstain from and as to what they should Camels, rabbits, hares, and swine were forbidden; but all ruminating animals that were cloven-footed or divided in the hoof were allowed. All fish that had not fins and scales were to be avoided. Several birds, mostly of the carnivorous species, and all reptiles and insects, were likewise prohibited, except locusts, beetles, and grasshoppers. These distinctions seem to have had some moral and civil objects in view, as well as reference to their health, and climate, and peculiar character and situation.

use.

* "EVERY moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given yOU ALL THINGS."-Gen., c. ix., v. 3.

But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat."-Gen., c. ix., v. 4.

Leviticus, c. xi., v. 3-27. Weasels, mice, tortoises, ferrets, chameleons, lizards, snails, and moles were also forbidden to the Jews.—Ib., v. 29, 30.

LETTER XXXII.

Almost all the Vegetable Kingdom is applicable and convertible into Human Food.-Instances of this in the Use of its various Genera for that Purpose in the different Parts of the World.-The Impossibility Mankind perishing from Famine.

MY DEAR SON,

We have seen in our preceding letter that almost the whole of the animal knigdom, in all its orders and species, is applicable to human subsistence, and that each kind is found to be alike gratifying to the taste and nutritious to the life of those who are accustomed to it. The human body has been framed on the principle of deriving this pleasure and utility from animated nature; and this, in all its genera, has likewise been so formed as to be subservient to human benefit in this respect. The consequence of these arrangements is, that mankind can never be famished as long as any animals besides themselves are in existence on the earth; for man, being everywhere the master, no species can escape his search and power.

The vegetable compartment of nature is as universally applicable to human nutrition; almost all kinds of vegetation will nourish human life, and have been used for this purpose, and are found to be satisfying or pleasing to those who are in the habit of taking them. To be as brief as possible, I will only select some of the more particular kinds as sufficient evidences of the general applicability.

Acorns are still used in California.* Lupins were the common food of some of the sects of the Grecian philosophers, and especially of the Cynic school, which they carried about them in little bags. Lupins and chestnuts are still used by the Sicilian peasantry when they cannot get corn.‡

* At San Francesco, "other Indians in the missions were grinding baked acorns to make into cakes, which constitute a large portion of their food."-Captain Beechey, vol. ii., p. 20.

In Lucian's "Runaway Slaves," philosophy represents the Cynic philosopher as saying, "a halfpenny, to buy a few lupins with, is all I want, and the first brook I come to supplies me with drink." They carried these in their wallets.

In 1835, a traveller in Sicily described "the great body of the peas