THE PREPARATION OF FOOD.
Many of the natural products used as foods are not found in the pre cise condition in which they can be eaten. A striking example of this is the cassava, Afanikot zailissima, which furnishes the staple article of diet for many South American tribes. As the roots are dug up in the woods they are so far from edible that it is a wonder how these wild people ever discovered the tedious process by which they become so. The root must first be peeled, then grated, and then hung up in nets to allow the poison ous juice which it contains to drain off. The product is then dried, beaten, and sifted to the condition of a coarse meal, which is cooked in thin cakes. The time of the women is principally occupied in this toil some drudgery.
The agent which man has most constantly employed in the preparation of his food is fire. He is essentially a cooking animal. When he dis covered this serviceable element is unknown. No tribe has ever been found ignorant of it. Probably it was one of his very earliest acquisitions. In the bone-caves of Belgium, in the river-drift of France in strata dating from the period when the elephant and rhinoceros made that land their home, are found fire-cracked flints and charcoal from the primitive hearths (Mortillet). The wide diffusion of fire shows that it was not so much prized for its warmth as for other uses. Most savage races are little sensible to cold, and in the tropics its importance in this respect was slight. Its chief
purposes were to give light and to cook food. An aversion to raw flesh is common among the rudest people. The Australians, who are often quoted as at the bottom of the scale, prefer to cook the worms and reptiles they are willing to eat. The wild hunting tribes of Eastern Canada distin guished the shore-dwellers as Eskimos, which means " raw-fish eaters " a term of opprobrium because they did not cook the fish they caught. All the cultivated cereals require the use of fire in their preparation, and many of the roots, leaves, and fruits of the forest first become nutritious to man when they have been subjected to the action of this element.
Roasting over the fire and burying in hot ashes are the simplest forms of cookery, and doubtless were the earliest. Seething in heated water could only be accomplished when appropriate vessels were at hand. These might be made of wood or fine network of grass, as is seen among the Indians of the Plains, the water being heated by dropping in hot stones. Vessels could be chipped out of soft stones, as the soapstone pots of California and elsewhere ; and that a main incentive to the discovery and improvement of pottery was a desire for more serviceable cooking utensils is obvious from their character.