In the Faro islands, in Iceland and Greenland, the food arises from the same source.
The shepherds in the province of Caracas, on the Oronoko, live wholly on flesh. The Tartars in Asia, and some savage nations in North America, live on raw and half putrid flesh, and some barbarous tribes eat their meat raw.
It appears to be the effect of climate and religion that makes the Hindoo adopt vegetable rather than animal food; it is the effect of natural production that makes the Greenlander relish whale-blubber and train-oil. It is to one or other of these causes that we must refer all such diversity of national tastes, though it would be difficult in many cases to separate the influence of each. We see the Englishman enjoying his under-done roast beef and his plum-pudding; the Scotsman his hodge-podge and his haggis; the Frenchman his ragouts, omlets, and fricandeaus; the German his sour-crout, sausages, and smoaked hams, the Italian his maccaroni; and the Tartar his horse-flesh.[6] “De gustibus non est disputandum.”—There is no disputing about tastes. They are too many, and too various, to be objects of rational discussion.
[6] An article of food which has lately been seriously recommended by Mr. Grey to Europeans as a most advantageous measure of political economy.
SINGULAR KIND OF ALIMENTS OF VARIOUS NATIONS.
Besides the before-mentioned diversities of national and individual taste for different kinds of substances, used as aliments, there are other kinds of food which we at least think more singular. Some of the tribes of Arabs, Moors, the Californians, and Ethiopians, eat tad-poles, locusts, and spiders.
In some places the flesh of serpents, that of the coluber natrix for example, is eaten; and the viper is made into broth. Several other reptiles are used as food by the European settlers in America, such as the rana bombina and rana taurina, two species of toads.
In the East, the lacerta scincus is considered a great luxury, and also an approdisiac. Even the rattle snake has been eaten, and the head boiled along with the rest of the body of the animal.
The horse, ass, and camel, are eaten in several regions of the earth, and the seal, walruss, and Arctic bear, have often yielded a supply to sailors.
On the singular taste of epicures it is not necessary to speak. Mæcenas, the prime minister of Augustus, and refined patron of Horace, had young asses served upon his table when he treated his friends; and, according to Pliny,[7] the Romans delighted in the flavour of young and well fattened puppies. This strange practice subsists still in China, and among the Esquimaux. Plump, and well roasted bats, laid upon a bed of olives, are eaten in the Levant as a dainty.