Bread of Dried Fish. The Laplanders, who have no corn of their own, make a kind of bread of the inner soft bark of a pine tree, either mixed with the coarsest barley meal, or with dried fish beaten into powder. The bark is collected when the sap is rising, it is afterwards dried in the sun, or over a slow fire, and then mixed with the coarsest barley meal, or dried fish beaten into powder. The poorer people grind the chaff, and even some of the straw along with the barley. Another kind of bread is made of dried fish and the root of the water dragon (_Calla palustris_), the root is taken up in the spring, before the leaves shoot out. It is dried, pounded, and boiled, till it becomes thick, like flummery, and after standing three or four days to lose its bitterness it is mixed with the powder of dried fish and the inner bark of the pine tree, and then made into a stiff paste, and baked over embers. Bread made of Moss. Some species of the tribe of Lichen, contain a considerable portion of starch, as the _Lichen Rangiferinus_, or rein-deer moss, which affords food to the stags and other fallow cattle of the North of Europe. The Icelanders form the lichen islandicus into bread, which is found to be extremely nutritious. The moss is collected in the summer, and, when dry, ground into powder, of which bread and gruel, or pottage, are made. It is sometimes also put whole into broth, or is boiled in whey, till it be converted into a jelly. In general, it is either previously steeped for some hours in warm water, or the water of the first boiling is rejected, in order to remove a part of the bitter extractive matter, which, if left, produces a disagreeable taste, and is apt to prove purgative. Bread made of Earth. The strangest substitute for bread that has ever been employed, is a sort of white earth. The poor in the Lordship of Moscoa in Upper Lusania, have been frequently compelled to make use of this earth as a substitute for bread. The earth is dug out of a pit where saltpetre had formerly been worked; when exposed to the rays of the sun it splits and cracks, and small globules issue from it like meal, which ferments when mixed with flour. On this earth, baked into bread, many persons have subsisted a considerable time. A similar earth is met with near Genomu, in Catalonia. In the western parts of Luisania too, the inhabitants have a most extraordinary custom of eating a white earth, mixed with clay and salt. The rowers also, who ply on the river Mississippi, frequently drink large quantities of muddy water, which cannot fail to leave in the stomach a considerable quantity of earth. But it cannot be doubted, that a large quantity of earthy substances taken into the stomach would prove deleterious to health. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Analysis of Bread Flour.