“The negroes of Guinea say that in their own country they _habitually_ eat a certain earth, the flavour of which is most agreeable to them, and which does not occasion them any inconvenience. Those who have addicted themselves to the excessive use of _caouac_ are so partial to it, that no punishment can prevent them from devouring this earth.”[HM] In the island of Java, between Sourabaya and Samarang, Labillardière saw small square reddish cakes publicly sold in the villages. The natives called them _tana ampo_ (_tanah_ signifies earth in Malay and Javanese); and on examining them more closely, he found that they were cakes made of a reddish clay, and intended for eating.[HN] The edible clay of Samarang has recently (1847) beep sent, by Mohnike, to Berlin in the shape of rolled tubes like cinnamon, and has been examined by Ehrenberg. It is a fresh-water formation deposited in tertiary limestone, and composed of microscopic polygastrica (Gallionella, Navicula) and of Phytolitharia.[HO] The natives of New Caledonia, to appease their hunger, eat lumps as large as the fist of friable steatite, in which Vauquelin detected an appreciable quantity of copper.[HP] In Popayan and many parts of Peru calcareous earth is sold in the streets as an article of food for the Indians. This is eaten together with the Coca (the leaves of the _Erythroxylon peruvianum_). We thus find that the practice of eating earth is common throughout the whole of the torrid zone among the indolent races who inhabit the most beautiful and fruitful regions of the earth. But accounts have also come from the north, through Berzelius and Retzius, from which we learn, that in the most remote parts of Sweden hundreds of cartloads of earth containing infusoria are annually consumed by the country people as bread-meal, more from fancy (like the smoking of tobacco) than from necessity. In some parts of Finland a similar kind of earth is mixed with the bread. It consists of empty shells of animalcules, so small and soft, that they break between the teeth without any perceptible noise, filling the stomach without yielding any actual nourishment. Chronicles and archives often make mention during times of war of the employment as food of infusorial earth, which is spoken of under the indefinite and general term of “mountain meal.” Such, for instance, was the case in the Thirty Years’ War, at Camin in Pomerania, Muskau in the Lausitz, and Kleiken in the Dessau territory; and subsequently in 1719 and 1733, at the fortress of Wittenberg.[HQ] Footnote 51: p. 20.—“_Images graven in rocks._”