Everybody has heard of the seal, bear, walrus, and whale in connection with Eskimo dietetics, and doubtless the stomachs of most persons would revolt at the idea of eating these animals, the taste for which, by the way, is merely a matter of early education or individual preference, for there is no good reason why they should not be just as palatable to the northern appetite as pig, sheep, and beef are to the inhabitants of temperate latitudes. As food they renew the nitrogenous tissues, reconstruct the parts and restore the functions of the Eskimo frame, prolong his existence, and produce the same animal contentment and joy as the more civilized viands of the white man's table. There are more palatable things than bear or eider duck, yet I know many persons to whom snails, olive oil, and _pate de fois gras_ are more repugnant. A tray full of hot seal entrails, a bowl of coagulated blood, and putrid fish are not very inviting or lickerish to ordinary mortals, yet they have their analogue in the dish of some farmers who eat a preparation of pig's bowels known as "chitterlings," and in the blood-puddings and Limburger cheese of the Germans. Blubber-oil and whale are not very dainty dishes, yet consider how many families subsist on half-baked saleratus biscuits, salted pork, and oleomargarine. On the mess table of the Fur Company's establishment at St. Paul island, seal meat is a daily article of consumption, and from personal experience I can testify as to its palatability, although it reminded one of indifferent beef rather overdone. Hair seal and bear steaks were on different occasions tried at the mess on board the Corwin, but everybody voted eider duck and reindeer the preference. It is not so very long since that whale was a favorite article of diet in England and Holland, and Arctic whalemen still, to my personal knowledge, use the freshly tried oil in cooking; for instance in frying cakes, for which they say it answers the purpose as well as the finest lard, while others breakfast on whale and potatoes prepared after the manner of codfish balls. The whale I have tasted is rather insipid eating, yet it appears to be highly nutritious, judging from the well-nourished look of natives who have lived on it, and the air of greasy abundance and happy contentment that pervades an Eskimo village just after the capture of a whale. Being ashore one day with our pilot, we met a native woman whom he recognized as a former acquaintance, and on remarking to her that she had picked up in flesh since he last saw her, she replied that she had been living on a whale all the Winter, which explained her plumpness.