the last named constituting the staple diet of the Arab races. Green vegetables are eaten by the native Australians and by the Californians, especially clover in the spring.

Honey. The antiquity of honey is not known; there is nothing to show whether the honey ant, termites and the honey bee existed in the Eocene period, but it is known that in the Pliocene period, in Mesopotamia, for example, honey was eaten by the lemurs, anthropoid apes, and by our precursors. The Australian aborigines are large consumers of honey. In fact, wherever the climate is propitious and the honey makers can live, honey is a favorite article of diet of primitive people.

Condiments. The subject of condiments will be exhaustively considered in this volume,' and the matter perhaps has no influential bearing on the evolution of man's diet. Nevertheless, the question of rendering food which is naturally insipid and unpalatable, appetizing, by the addition of savory substances known as condiments, has from certain points of view a relation to dietary evolution.

Appetizing food, even while it is still in the mouth, and before entering the stomach, excites the secretion of the gastric and pancreatic juices and that of the saliva, so that a food that is unpalatable and indigestible may be readily digestible if it is rendered appetizing by the agency of a condiment. The Hindoo adds curry to his tasteless rice and the Spaniard onions to his bread. For a similar reason, condiments are added to palatable food in order to heighten its appetizing qualities, as for instance, mustard, caper sauce, apple jelly and last but not least, salt, for salt is essentially a condiment, since the daily food ingested by the civilized man provides sufficient sodium salts for the body needs, although such food is not salty to the taste.

The action of salt as a condiment deserves further study (see Chapter XI of this Volume) because the development of flavor, which the addition of salt induces, is due to increased osmotic action. The addition of salt conspires to produce an isotonic fluid with more rapid traveling activities, stimulating salivary flow and subsequently the secretion of the gastric fluid. The evidence in favor of the use of salt and of other condiments is that the palatability of food is increased, and probably also its absorption value. It must be borne in mind that saliva digests starchy material and stimulates the secretion of gastric juice, which stimulates the intestine when the gastric juice enters the duodenum. An enzyme is produced in the mucous membrane to which Bayliss and Starling have 1 Chapter XVII.

given the name of secretin. This in turn is absorbed and carried by the blood to the pancreas, to which it acts as a stimulant and causes it to secrete an active digestive juice. It is therefore a desirable object to increase the flow of the saliva by means of condiments added to otherwise unpalatable food.

Man used condiments ages ago, probably when he first became gregarious. He did this first by coction, not long after he had learned the art of roasting flesh. He found that such meat was palatable and easily digested on account of its sodium chlorid content. He then learned the habit of smearing his cooked vegetables with drippings of fat from the roasted meat. Salt was the condiment next employed, and for many centuries, condiments too numerous almost to name have been used.

PRECIBICULTURISTS AS BOTANISTS.-But the use of this wide variety of foods came about after centuries of small advances. "Necessity is a hard master, but whoever fully graduates in this school has thoroughly learned his lesson." This saying applies with great force to the precibiculturists in their search for and preparation of food. With them it was a case of the survival of the fittest, for those who did not learn which vegetables or plants were good to eat or how to prepare them in the best way, did not survive. By generations of this striving with nature to wrest from her a living, these people developed a marvelous instinct as to which plant was nutritious and which poisonous, and this instinct has been handed down to the present generation of primitive men. "handing down" from generation to generation may also be rightly termed the reeducation of each generation in the judicious selection and preparation of vegetable foods. Knowledge of this character acquired through enormous toil and pain is one not likely to be lost.

This

All the precibiculturists are practical and sound botanists, and they not only have learned to choose plants best adapted to nourish them, but also how to prepare these natural products in the most effective and suitable manner possible. They are versed in the best modes of gathering and hulling the wild cereals, how to dry, grind and store berries and roots, and to make biscuits and cakes, and they are able to distinguish between a poisonous and innocuous plant with unerring accuracy. The pygmies were the very first race to acquire a thorough knowledge of botany and to realize its importance. If a pygmy is of the opinion that a fruit may be poisonous, he will soak it for two or three days, and then give it to one of his dogs, and if the animal does not become ill, he will eat it himself. Even from unpleasant tasting and poisonous vegetable substances pygmies will prepare wholesome and palatable foods by maceration

and the application of heat. It is well known that many American tribes. are excellent botanists, and on occasions, good herbalist doctors. As striking evidence of their knowledge of herbs, Raffour (5) states that the very first botanic garden in which medical herbs were grown for the use of medical students and their teachers seems to have been in Mexico.

The Beverages of Precibicultural Man.-The beverages used by ancient races are (a) water, (b) milk, (c) oil, (d) the juices of fruits and sap of trees, (e) fermented liquors, (f) distilled liquors, (g) tea infusion, (h) coffee infusion, (i) chocolate and broths. Blood was occasionally used as a beverage in days long past. The Huns are said to have been in the habit of drinking the blood of their horses, and it is also stated that the Ostjaks of the Obi valley were very fond of reindeer and bear blood, which they drank while warm. The blood of human victims was at one time drunk by some cannibals and savage warriors.

WATER.-Water is the natural drink of the races who have advanced little in development. The animal or man who drinks only to quench his thirst, does so with the means by which this aim can be most effectually attained. It was an instinct with primeval man, as with the rest of the brute creation, to assuage his thirst with water, which is still an instinct with the precibiculturist. It is true that many of them rapidly develop a taste for alcohol, but this is an acquired taste, an abnormal appetite. However, in their wild state they know nothing of fermented beverages, which belong more or less essentially to the agricultural period.

Water is the main and universal drink of precibiculturists, and the water which they use for drinking purposes is procured from lake, pool, spring or stream. In dry, sandy countries, in lands in which droughts are long continued and frequent, as in parts of Australia, the aborigines have been known to dig wells to a depth of several feet. But this is very seldom done, for two reasons: first, because it entails too much hard work when they lack the appliances requisite for digging; second, because most primitive people are nomads, and whenever possible choose sites for an encampment where water is easily available. Furthermore, on account of the wandering habits of precibiculturists, and also because they travel in small numbers, the water they drink is, for the most part, free from contamination and infected matter, and therefore water-borne diseases are practically unknown to them.

Primitive man, in the majority of instances, drinks in the same manner as his ancestor, the anthropoid ape. He bends down and applies his mouth directly to the liquid and sucks it up, or he may make use of his hands as a receptacle. Mr. Hillier, quoted by Campbell, says that certain

Australian tribes employ a method of drinking which may be described as "hand lapping." The water is shot with remarkable accuracy from one hand into the mouth, which is held from twelve to eighteen inches above the pool, the hand traveling to within about six inches of the mouth. Drinking vessels of any description are only quite occasionally used. It is an interesting fact, and one which may be recommended to the attention of the medical profession, that, like the lower animals, primitive man seldom, if ever, drinks with his meals.

But although it is probably blind instinct which prompts primitive peoples not to drink with their meals, not the knowledge that the habit is not conducive to good health, they are not entirely ignorant of the fact that water possesses medicinal properties. Some savage races, notably the native Australians, drink large quantities of water for the relief of dyspepsia. It is possible that the imbibing of considerable quantities of hot water, which was prescribed by many physicians not long ago in the treatment of indigestion, may have had its origin in the practice of these savage tribes. The cold bath is also occasionally recommended by those versed in medical lore among primitive people. The Fuegans, when suffering from certain complaints of a feverish character, in the endeavor to promote perspiration, imbibed copious draughts of water, presumably hot, and the northern California Indians employ a Turkish bath to open the pores of the skin freely, with the view of relieving or curing various infections.

MILK. The ancients-by these we mean the Greeks, Romans and perhaps the Egyptians-did not drink animal milk to any extent as a beverage, but converted it into cheese. Dogs' and cows' milk was used; the milk of the former is not much used nowadays, but the milk of the cow, ewe, goat and ass in Europe and America, of the buffalo in Africa, of the camel in Persia, of the mare in Tartary, of the reindeer in Lapland, of the llama and vicuna in South America, and of the yak in the Pamirs and Tibet, has been and is still used largely for drinking purposes, as well as for making cheese and butter.

OIL.-Oil was and is still used by some of the northern races, although more with the view of maintaining their animal heat than as a beverage. The drinking of oil dates back to the period when man first lived in Arctic regions. It was an instinct with him, as much as drinking water to quench thirst was with the savage. The amount of oil and blubber ingested each day by an Eskimo is prodigious. However, all people who live in very cold climates imbibe oil and oleaginous food as necessities. It is related that after Napoleon was finally beaten, and there was a large

gathering of allied troops in London to celebrate this event, the Siberian Cossacks, who were among these troops, swarmed around the street lamps, which at that time were lighted by means of oil, and eagerly consumed the oil contained therein. Also not long after this peaceful incursion of the Cossacks from the Don, London experienced a dearth of tallow candles.

JUICES OF FRUITS.-It is reasonable to suppose that the cocoanut flourished countless ages ago. Indeed, palm trees are known to have existed in the Eocene age. This being the case, there can be little doubt that the abundant juice of the cocoanut furnished milk even before agriculture and the domestication of animals was practiced. This milk was without doubt the most ancient of lacteal fluids, and was used by the men of those times to quench thirst when cool water was not accessible, in the same manner as the primitive races of such regions employ this juice at the present time.

It may also be assumed that in tropical and warm climates our ancestors took advantage of the juices of some of the fruits and employed them as cooling beverages.

FERMENTED LIQUORS.-With regard to the drinking of alcohol in any form among primitive men, little, perhaps none, was consumed. The same may be asserted of existing precibiculturists, but with a certain amount of reserve.

According to Giradin, the Araucanians before having had relations with other nations, made the fermented drink, now called chica, of maize. The Chinese almost from time immemorial have drunk a liquor made from rice fermentation. Beer is supposed to have been invented in 1996 B. C. Herodotus and other historians state that beer was the most common drink among the Egyptians, who called it hekt. From the results of an investigation as to the use of fermented drinks by prehistoric peoples, M. G. de Mortillet concludes that the lake dwellings of Clairvaux in the Jura, and of Switzerland, show that the neolithic people of Central Europe had a wine made from raspberries and mulberries, and the dwellings of Bourget in Savoy and various stations in the Alps appear to testify that the use of this wine continued through the Bronze Age. On the southern slope of the Alps, the relics of the dwellings built between the prehistoric and protohistoric ages reveal the use of another fermented liquor prepared from the dogwood. Traces of the use of grape wine are found in the terra mares of the plain of the Po, going as far back as the earliest Bronze Age (13).

The precibiculturists of the present time make some artificial drinks