Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/296

238 those that live by prey regard little whether what they take is of their own or any other species. But any one who considers the admirable chain of nature, in which man, alone endowed with reason, justly claims the highest rank, and in which the half-reasoning elephant, the sagacious dog, the architect beaver, etc., in whom instinct so nearly resembles reason as to have been mistaken for it by men of no mean capacities, are placed next; from these descending through the less informed quadrupeds and birds to the fish and insects, who seem, besides the instinct of fear which is given them for self-preservation, to be moved only by the stings of hunger to eat, and those of lust to propagate their species, which, when born, are left entirely to their own care; and at last by the medium of the oysters, etc., which not being able to move, but as tossed about by the waves, must in themselves be furnished with both sexes, that the species may be continued; shading itself away into the vegetable kingdom, for the preservation of whom neither sensation nor instinct is wanted; whoever considers this, I say, will easily see that no conclusion in favour of such a practice can be drawn from the actions of a race of beings placed so infinitely below us in the order of nature.

But to return to my subject. Simple as their food is, their cookery so far as I saw is as simple: a few stones heated and laid in a hole, with the meat laid upon them and covered with hay, seems to be the most difficult part of it. Fish and birds they generally broil, or rather toast, spiking them upon a long skewer, the bottom of which is fixed under a stone, another stone being put under the fore part of the skewer, which is raised or lowered by moving the second stone as circumstances may require. The fern roots are laid upon the open fire until they are thoroughly hot and their bark burnt to a coal; they are then beaten with a wooden hammer over a stone, which causes all the bark to fly off, and leaves the inside, consisting of a small proportion of a glutinous pulp mixed with many fibres, which they generally spit out, after having sucked each mouthful a long time. Strange and unheard of as it must