ur
wines are disgusted and spit them out. Horse-flesh is commonly sold in
the markets of the north. Then again, there are some wandering Moors,
who subsist entirely on gum senegal, and there have been many cases of
shipwreck where the mariners have even subsisted for weeks on old shoes,
tobacco, or whatever they could get; in short, what cannot custom
effect? The Turk, by constant habit, is enabled to take opium in
quantities that would soon destroy us; and every one must have known
private cases where individuals in this country could take laudanum in
surprising doses; we have all more or less experienced the power of
habit in our acquired tastes, and whether we derive pleasure from the
fumes of tobacco, or approve the flavour of olives, we may remember that
at first we disliked, or were indifferent about either. History itself
informs us, that Mithridates was able to drink poison; and there was a
female slave, sent to Alexander by King Porus, who was even brought up
with it from her infancy. But to bring this influence of custom upon the
taste, still more in point, we find recorded in a work upon zoology, the
following remarkable case:--The provender for a lamb, which a ship's
company had on board, was all consumed; in the absence of other food
they offered it flesh, which it was at last compelled to devour, and
gradually acquired such a relish for this new aliment, that it could
never after be prevailed on to eat any thing else.

It is very certain that the most natural tastes are the most simple: our
first aliment is milk, and it is only by degrees we bring ourselves to
relish strong food; one speaking proof that such stimulating diet is not
natural to the human palate, is the indifference children have for such
food, and they evidently prefer pastry, fruit, &c., until the digestive
organs become more depraved. Neither has man the peculiarities of a
carnivorous animal; he has no hawk-bill, no sharp talons to tear his
prey, and he wants that strength of stomach and power of digestion which
is requisite to assimilate such heavy fare; his tongue is not rough,
but, as compared with that of ravenous animals, of a very smooth
texture; neither are his teeth pointed and rough like a saw, which above
all is a distinguishing mark. It is well known that in our West Indian
colonies, all the negroes still surviving, who were originally brought
over from Africa, have their teeth filed down to this day, which was at
first expressl