Vegetable substances used for the food of man / [Edwin Lankester. Revised and partly rewritten].

  • Edwin Lankester
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vegetable substances used for the food of man / [Edwin Lankester. Revised and partly rewritten]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    these circiinistances parched chick-peas, or lehlebhy, are in great demand, and are as common in the shops as biscuits in those of England. In Grand Cairo and Da- mascus there are many ])ersons who make it their sole business to fry peas, for the supply of those who traverse the desert. The seeds of the kerkedan, a small shrub found grow- ing wild and sometimes cultivated in the north of Nubia, are made into a kind of bread, and form the principal food of the Kerrarish Arabs; and a decoction of the roasted grains is used as a substitute for coffee. Another shrub, called symka, indigenous to the same country, produces legumes resembling peas, and containing round rose-coloured seeds which afford e.vcellent nourishment for camels, and are, when green, employed as human food. These likewise “ the Arabs collect and dry, and by hard boiling obtain from them an oil which they use instead of butter to grease their hair and bodies.”* Various descriptions of pulse are cultivated in the East, but these are seldom of a large growth. The cul- ture of smaller legumes as human food, similarly with that of the millets and other small-seeded grains, is adapted only to that state of society in which the money- ; price of labour is low, and yet where the climate and 1 other concurring circumstances are obstacles to the cul- I tivation of the more valuable kinds of vegetables. Mois- ture and heat, as well as a soil comparatively rich, are required for the production of rice ; and the cercalia grown in more temperate climates cannot be raised un- less there be either a sufficiency of manure, which cannot be procured without an abundant stock of domesticated animals, or a natural richness of soil, which is incom- patible with dry land in a warm climate. In the elevated parts of India which lie out of the direction ol the periodical rains, a scatity irrigation can I at best be obtained, and that only by sinking deep wells or by constructing tanks and reservoirs at a great e.\- ' pense; where these imperfect means arc not w ithin * Burckhardt’s ‘ Nubia,’ p. -tG.
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