"Some of the Siberian tribes, when they travel, carry a small bag of their native earth, the taste of which they suppose will preserve them from, all the evils of a foreign sky."[468]
We are informed that the Tunguses of Siberia eat a clay called "rock marrow," which they mix with marrow. "Near the Ural Mountains, powdered gypsum, commonly called 'rock meal,' is sometimes mixed with bread, but its effects are pernicious."[469]
"The Jukabiri of northeastern Siberia have an earth of sweetish and rather astringent taste," to which they "ascribe a variety of sanatory properties."[470]
There is nothing in the records relating to Victoria respecting the use of any earth for the purpose of appeasing hunger, but Grey mentions that one kind of earth, pounded and mixed with the root of the Mene (a species of Hæmadorum), is eaten by the natives of West Australia.[471]
The Apache and Navajo branches of the Athapascan family are not unacquainted with the use of clay as a comestible, although among the former it is now scarcely ever used and among the latter used only as a condiment to relieve the bitterness of the taste of the wild potato; in the same manner it is known to both the Zuñi and Tusayan.
Wallace says that eating dirt was "a very common and destructive habit among Indians and half-breeds in the houses of the whites."[472]
"Los apassionados à comer tierra son los Indios Otomacos."[473]
"The earth which is eaten by the Ottomacs [of the Rio Orinoco] is fat and unctuous."[474]
Waitz[475] cites Heusinger as saying that the Ottomacs of the Rio Orinoco eat large quantities of a fatty clay.