“Captain Healey, of the revenue cutter ‘Bear,’ brought to this place, last autumn, a shipwrecked seaman, who had been rescued by the Siberian Tchuktchis, with whom he remained some two years. He described their mode of making an intoxicating liquor thus: in the summer, mushrooms or fungi were collected in large quantity, and eaten by a man who, like our Indians, prepared himself by fasting for the feast. After eating enormous quantities of the fungi, he vomited into a receptacle, and again loaded up, time and again, and disgorged the stuff in a semi-fermented or half-digested condition. It was swallowed by those who were waiting for the drink; and his urine was also imbibed, to aid in producing a debauch, resulting in frenzied intoxication.”—(Personal letter from Surgeon B. J. D. Irwin, U. S. army, dated San Francisco, Cal., April 28, 1888.) “The seaman, J. B. Vincent, whom I found with the Tchuktchi last summer, says that they collect in their tents a species of fungi, and during their carnival season, corresponding to about our Christmas holidays, one man is selected, who masticates a quantity of it, and drinks an enormous supply of water; he then gets into his deer’s team, and is driven from camp to camp, repeating the mastication and drinking at each camp, where his urine is drunk by the people with an effect of intoxication. The arrival of this man is hailed with much pomp and ceremony by the people. The seaman, Vincent, witnessed several of these ceremonies, and was pressed to join in the orgies, being called ‘a boy,’ when he declined to sustain his part.”—(Personal letter from Capt. M. A. Healey, U. S. R. M. Steamer “Bear,” dated San Francisco, Cal., May 19, 1888.) Kamtchadales.—“These people formerly had no other drink than water, and to make themselves a little lively they used to drink an infusion of mushrooms.”—(“From Paris to Pekin,” Meignan, London, 1885, p. 281.) D’Auteroche, who made a journey from St. Petersburgh to Tobolsk in Siberia, in compliance with an invitation from the Empress Catherine, in the middle of the last century, to observe the transit of Venus, makes no mention of the mushroom-orgies of the natives. His work was not of much value, in an ethnological sense, being largely restricted to descriptions of the mineral resources of the regions traversed, and only to a slight degree attending to the ethnology of the country. It is strange that Maltebrun, although familiar with Steller, does not refer to the mushroom orgy. He does say of the Kamtchadales: “In summer, the women go into the woods to gather vegetables, and during this occupation they give way to a libertine frenzy like that of the ancient Bacchantes.”—(“Universal Geography,” American edition, Boston, Mass., 1847, vol. i. p. 347, article “Siberia.”) Stanley’s “Congo,” New York, 1885, was examined carefully, but no reference to any use of urine or ordure was found in it.