their own nature, yet become gradually less offensive, and at last
pleasant. We have very remarkable proofs of this in all parts of the
world. In China they eat cats and dogs, while the poorer classes think
rats, mice, and other vermin, no bad food. The Romans thought peacocks a
dainty, which we quite nauseate. The Greenlander and the Esquimaux
relish train-oil, whilst these and all savages, on first tasting our
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