Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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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.
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