_The chewing of very tough substances in order to extract therefrom liquid or nourishment._--The recently extinct Tasmanians included among their articles of diet a species of sea-weed which, even when cooked, was so tough as to require long-sustained mastication in order to extract its nutrient elements. The Indians of North California chew kelp, which is “as tough as white leather” (_i. e._, leather dressed with alum). “A young fellow with good teeth will masticate a piece of it a whole day.” Again Featherman[11] tells how when the Bushmen are short of food in the winter they steep an old dried gnu-skin in water and, having rubbed off the hair, boil it, and proceed to gnaw the tough morsel until their very jaws ache. The Modoc Indians are said to munch the raw kais root all day long.[12] Among the Esquimaux it is a universal custom to chew the raw skin of the whale, the porpoise, and the seal for the blubber it contains, and the skin being as tough as india-rubber, it requires, as may be imagined, a good deal of chewing. The Lower Californians also chew deer-skin and ox-skin (Bayert). The more southern Esquimaux, according to Nansen, preserve the stalks of _angelica_ by steeping them in a mixture of chewed blubber and saliva. Finally, I may refer to the habit of chewing the sugar-cane, a practice which is prevalent among the natives in all countries where the cane grows, and affords, it need scarcely be said, abundant exercise for the jaws and teeth. _Mastication in the preparation of beverages._--I find that among widely separated aboriginal peoples chewing is resorted to in the preparation of beverages, both intoxicating and non-intoxicating. The Gran Chaco Indians make an intoxicating drink by chewing the algarroba bean and then spitting into a receptacle. In other parts of South America berries are chewed with the same object. In some of the Pacific Islands boys and girls with good teeth are selected to chew a root (kava), from which they then prepare a drink. In New Guinea drinks are similarly prepared from roots. Boiled cassava root is chewed by the Indians of Nicaragua for the same purpose. In British Guiana the natives make a drink by adding chewed maize and saliva to sweet potato, maize, and sugar-cane. The Indians in Honduras, after steeping cassava cake or carbonised bread in hot water, chew a portion and mix it with the rest.