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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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.
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