Democrat and sentinel. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1853-1866, 1864-12-07
How Tastes Differ.

Remair relates, on the authority of III.
Della Hire, that young French lady
could never resist the temptation Of eating
spider whenever she met with one in
her walks. They are SAID to taste like
nuts, at least this was the opinion of the
celebrated Taria Schurman, who not only
eat them, but justified her taste by say
ing that she was born under scorpia.
Latrille informs US that the astronomer
Lainue was equally fond of this offensive
morseL Man is truly an omnirerous ami
NAL, for there is nothing which is disgust
ing to one nation that is not the choice
food of another. Flesh, fish, fowl, in
sect. even the gigantic centipedes of Bra
I'll, many of them foot and half In
length and half an inch broad, were
! seen by Humbolt to be dragged out of
| their holes and crunched alive by the
children.
Serpents of all sorts have been con-
| sumed as food, as the host of the cele-
brated inn at Terracini frequently accosts
his guests as politely " requesting to know
if they prefer the eel of the hedge or the
eel of the ditch" To evince this attach
ment to their favorite pursuit most natu-
ralists seem TO consider it dispensable to
taste and recommend some insect or
other. Darwin assures that the CATER
piller of'the hawmoth is delicious; Kirby
and Spencer think the ant good eating and
push their chronological zeal so far as to
distinguish between the flavor of the alb
domen and thorax and Remir re-
commends the the catterpiller of the
plastic gramma as delicious dish. How
much we eat and upon how much we
might live, are curious matters of specu-
lation and in an article on the subject in
an English review we find the following
suggestive facts:
The accounts which travellers give of
the quantity of food that can be consumed
are extraordinary. Sir John Ross esti-
mated that an Esquimaux will eat per-
haps twenty pounds of flesh and oil daily.
Compare this with Valentines six pounds,
or with Canaro's twelve ounces OF solids
and fourteen ounces of wine. Captain
Parry tried as a matter of curiosity how
much an Esquimaux lad who was scarce
ly full grown would consume, if left to
himself, and weighed the following arti-
cles before being given.
He was twenty hours getting through
them and certainly did not consider the
quantity extraordinary: Sea horse-fesh,
hard froze. four pounds four ounces do.
do. boiled, four pounds four ounces, bread
and bread dust, one pound and twelve
ounces. To this must be added one and
a quarter pints of rich gravy soup, three
wine glasses of raw spirits, one tumbler-
full of strong grog, one gallon of water.
Capt Cochrane, in his Journey through
Russia and Siberian Tartary,' relates that
the Admiral Saritcheff was informed that
one of the yakutis ate in four and twenty
hours, the hind quarters of a large OK,
twenty pounds of fat, and a proportion
| ate quantity of melted butter for his drink.
To test the truth of the statement, the
| admiral gave him thick porridge of rice
boiled down with three pounds of butter,
| weighing together twenty eight pounds,
and although the glutton had already
breakfasted, he sat down to it with great
eagerness, and consumed the whole with
out stirring from the spot. Captain Coch-
rane also states that he has seen three
Yakutis devour reindeer at a meal and
a calf weighing about two hundred
pounds is not two much for a meal for
five of these gluttons.
Some catterpillers eat double their
weight in food; a COW eats forty-six
pounds daily, mouse eats eight times
as much in proportion to its own weight
as is eaten by man. But when such
facts are cited, we must bear in mind the
enormous differences in the nature of the
food thus weighed, their relative amounts
of water, and the indtgestable material
The same caution is requisite in speaking
of a mans diet.