Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 July 1874 — Exceptional Foods. [ARTICLE]

Exceptional Foods.

Du. Payy, in his work on “Food and Dietetics,” devotes a chapter to the enumcration of the exceptional animal foods eaten in different parts of the globe. We learn from it that almost every creature living, however obnoxious, is, in some country or other, esteemed a dainty or a useful article of diet. Spiders are eaten by the Bushmen and inhabitants of New Caledonia. Grasshoppers are eaten by the Bushmen and Ute Indians. White ants are highly relished by the natives of Australia and the tribes along the banks of the Zonga. Bees are eaten by various peoples. The Moors of West Barbary consider the honeycomb filled with young bees a great delicacy. Several varieties of moths are in favor with the Australians; one species, called bugong, having large and unctuous bodies, is preferred by them to any other article of food. Caterpillars were eaten by the ancient Romans, and are still in favor with the South Africans. Grubs of all kinds arc devoured by the Australians: The chrysalis of the silkworm is food for the Chinese.

Locusts are eaten in great quantities, both fresh and salted, by the Persians, Egyptians, Arabians, Bushmen, North American Indians and others. They have a strong vegetable taste —the flavor varying with the plants on which they feed. Dr. Livingstone thought them palatable when roasted. Diodorus Siculus and Ludolphus refer to a race of people in Ethiopia who subsisted on locusts. Ludolphus remarks: "For it is a very sweet and wholesome sort- of diet, by means of which a certain Portuguese garrison in India that was ready to yield for want of provision held out until it was relieved another way.” Madden states in his “ Travels”: “ The" Arabs make a sort of bread of locusts. They dry them and grind them to powder, then mix this powder with water, forming them into round cakes which serve for bread.” Snails in Europe and slugs in China have a reputation as delicate articles of nutriment. Lizards, snakes, frogs, dogs, cats, mice and birds’-nests are eaten by the Chinese. Toads are eaten by the South Africans, and -a large frog called matta-metto, w'hich when cooked looks like a chicken. Sea-urchins are much sought after as food in different parts of Europe, and sea-cu-cumbers are eaten by the inhabitants of China and the South-Sea Islands. A tribe of Ottomacs on the Rio Negro subsist principally during the rainy season upon, a fat, unctuous clay found in their district. The Japanese also eat this clay, made into thin cakes, called tahaampo. Ehrenberg found that the clay consisted chiefly of the remains of freshwater animals and plants of microscopic size. A kind of earth known as breadmeal is still largely eaten in Northern Europe: and a similar substance called mountain-meal used in Northern Germany in times of famine. Various tribes of Africa eat clay in the intervals between their meals, preferring that which is taken from ant-hills. The inhabitants of various countries are addicted to the use of clay— of Australia being notoriously so.