Pica

“ Schurig, whose works are a comprehensive treasure house of ancient medical lore, devotes a long chapter (cap. II) of his Chylologia, published in 1725, to pica as manifested mainly, though not exclusively, in pregnant women. Some women, he tells us, have been compelled to eat all sorts of earthy substances, of which sand seems the most common, and one Italian woman when pregnant ate several pounds of sand with much satisfaction, following it up with a draught of her own urine. Lime, mud, chalk, charcoal, cinders, pitch are also the desired substances in other cases detailed. ”

“ Others will have a craving for some article not proper for food;—this is called Pica. They will devour chalk, cinders, earth, wood, flies, spiders, charcoal, and various other things, sometimes of the most disgusting kind, though ordinarily they may be quite fastidious in their diet. ”

“ The natives assert that B. pica builds in holes in the trees, and that when incubation has fairly commenced, the female takes her seat on the eggs, and the male closes up the orifice by which she entered, leaving only a small aperture through which he feeds his partner, whilst she successfully guards their treasures from the monkey tribes; her formidable bill nearly filling the entire entrance. See a paper by Edgar L. Layard, Esq. Mag. Nat. Hist. March, 1853. Dr. Horsfield had previously observed the same habit in a species of Buceros in Java. ”

“ There is but one species of Pica in India containing three sub-species which grade into one another in the areas where they meet, but which are well differentiated over large tracts of country in which their characteristics are quite constant. ”

“ It is the only system in use in first-class offices today.
It is popularly supposed that six picas equal one inch. This is approximately so, but not absolutely, for six picas measure but .99648 of an inch. The American pica runs about three points less than 72 lines to the foot. ”

“ The Pica is about the size of a Guinea Pig, and covered with yellowish-red hair. It inhabits the loftiest summits of mountains, and employs itself, during the summer, in collecting and drying a supply of herbage for winter use. The heaps of hay thus accumulated are of extraordinary dimensions, sometimes measuring as much as six or seven feet in height, and are invaluable to the hunters of Sables, affording fodder for their Horses at a period when no other provender is obtainable. ”

“ It certainly seems more common on soils lacking in certain constituents or exhausted by 159repeatedly growing certain crops. Nevertheless, in France it might be urged that pica occurs equally on all kinds of soil, and a German author, Lemke, ascribes this perversion of nutrition to the want of phosphorus. Haubner and Siedamgrotsky attribute it to a nervous disorder. All causes which exhaust the organism, especially all chronic diseases of digestive origin, may induce aberration of appetite. ”

“ Nash. ↑ Many of the Presbyterians, says Lord Clarendon, when ousted from their preferment, or excluded from the House of Commons by the Independents, pretended to make a merit of it, in respect of their loyalty. And some of them had the confidence to present themselves to King Charles the Second, both before and after his Restoration, as sufferers for the crown; this behaviour is ridiculed in many parts of this canto. ↑ Pique, or pica, is a depraved appetite, or desire of improper food, to which sickly females arc more especially subject. ”

“ Amongst the Rodentia, no members of the Lagomorpha (hares, rabbits and picas) are known to hibernate, although some of the species, like the mountain hare (Lepus timidus) , extend far to the north in the palaearctic region, and the picas (Ochotona) live at high altitudes in the Himalayas and Central Asia, where the cold of winter is excessive, and where the snow lies deep for many months. It is probable that the picas live in fissures and burrows beneath the snow, and feed on stores of food accumulated during the summer and autumn. ”

“ Around the landing-place at Callao we saw women, with little braziers of charcoal, ladling out the steaming picantes to the idlers and laborers of the port, and we are told it is their only article of food. In the poorer parts of Lima there is a picanteria every few yards, and each establishment has its patrons among the porters, water-carriers, and negro laborers of the neighborhood. The many varieties of picantes have distinct names, but all are flavored with red pepper in abundance. ”

“ The driver holds one end in his right hand, and, by constant thrusts, drives it into the animals without mercy. By lifting the end of the [Pg 105] picano, the part outside the becket is lowered, and the perpendicular goad touches the backs of the second pair, while in his left hand the driver holds the picano chico (little goad) , and spurs the tongue oxen, or those nearest the wagon, upon which the severest labor falls. The principle upon which the cattle are guided is also peculiar. ”

“ Characters per pica 3.8 THE EARLY PRINTERS CAST THEIR OWN TYPES, MADE INK
They instructed some local blacksmith to make the iron frames
or chases in which the types are confined for printing; and
Characters in a complete font
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z & $ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 * ¢ % a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z . , - : ; ! ? ‘ ’ “ ” ( ) Ligatures are included in fonts of 6 to 18 point sizes, and are obtainable in 24 to 120 point sizes in foundry lines.
fi ff fl ffi ffl
Spartan Medium Italic
Series Number 681 ... Common line
72pt. ”

“ On account of the weight of the "whisk"—it was formed of a wire framework covered with point lace—the "piccadilly" or stiffened collar was devised.
Hone in his "Everyday Book" writes—
"The picadil was the round hem, or the piece set about the edge or skirt of a garment, whether at top or bottom; also a kind of stiff collar, made in fashion of a band, that went about the neck and round about the shoulders: hence the term 'wooden picadilloes' (meaning the pillory) in Hudibras. At the time that ruffs and picadils were much in fashion, there was a celebrated ordinary near St. ”

“ There was a great abundance and variety of tropical fruits, but the dorian was never in evidence. It was never the season for the dorian. It was always going to arrive from Burma sometime or other, but it never did. By all accounts it was a most strange fruit, and incomparably delicious to the taste, but not to the smell. Its rind was said to exude a stench of so atrocious a nature that when a dorian was in the room even the presence of a polecat was a refreshment. We found many who had eaten the dorian, and they all spoke of it with a sort of rapture. ”

“ We listened, and could distinguish a confused sound of grunting and squeaking coming from a distance amid the trees.
“Pigs, I suspect,” observed the padre. “We may shoot one or two, and they will prove a welcome addition to our larder.”
“Pigs they certainly are; but of a species which I have no wish to encounter unless I am safe out of their reach,” exclaimed the doctor. “My friends, it is no joke; if they once get up to us, we are as good as dead men. They are peccaries,—terrible little brutes, with tusks as sharp as lancets, savage as jaguars, and too stupid to know fear. ”

“ The pique is a small, white insect, which lives in sand, but fastens as a parasite on man and beast, more particularly on swine. It attacks man by penetrating the skin, for the most part under the toe-nails, where an egg is laid, from which a painful tumor is afterwards formed. ”

“ There are always quantities of pigs in a Philippine village, for, as I think I told you, they are the scavengers, and though the natives are not more unkind to those benefactors than to any other animals, to call one of them a pig is a frightful insult. In spite of all this, the favourite and most esteemed Filipino delicacy is sucking-pig, roasted whole. ”

“ The soil consists entirely of pulverized lava. The so-called Fayal wine, though named after an adjacent island, was formerly produced here, and largely exported to Europe. But in 1852 the vines were attacked by the Oidium fungus and completely destroyed, while the orange-trees suffered almost as much from the Coccus hesperidum. The people were consequently forced to emigrate in great numbers, till the planting of fig-trees and apricots alleviated the evil. Pico also produces a species of wood resembling mahogany, and equal in quality to it. Its chief town is Lagens do Pico. ”

“ You can't make butter if the piskies turn the cream against the sun, and every dairymaid will tell 'ee so. If the piskie up to Barton farm has a spite against a new maid, he'll spoil her baking of bread, so that the bread will come out of the oven full of 'piskie-spits,' and he'll play her tricks until she is turned out of the house. When I was a boy, the piskies used to have fine fun with the maidens up to Barton on winter nights when all the work was done. ”

“ Meat and game they only eat occasionally; they prefer jabutís, or land-tortoises, monkeys, inambus (Tinamus sp.) , toucans, and the smaller species of wild pig (Dicotyles torquatus) . But they will not eat the large wild pig (D. labiatus) , the anta (Tapirus Americanus) , or the white-rumped mutun (Crax globicera?) . They consume great quantities of peppers (species of Capsicum) , preferring the small red ones, which are of excessive pungency: when they have no fish, they boil several pounds of these peppers in a little water, and dip their bread into the fiery soup thus formed. ”

“ And it is observed by Gesner, that the jaw-bones, and hearts, and galls
of Pikes, are very medicinable for several diseases, or to stop blood, to
abate fevers, to cure agues, to oppose or expel the infection of the
plague, and to be many ways medicinable and useful for the good of
mankind: but he observes, that the biting of a Pike is venomous, and
hard to be cured.
And it is observed, that the Pike is a fish that breeds but once a year;
and that other fish, as namely Loaches, do breed oftener: as we are
certain tame Pigeons do almost every month ”

“ I have seen Maltese beggars, Arab camel-drivers, Dominican friars, New York Aldermen, Digger Indians; the foulest, frowziest creatures I have ever seen are thorough-bred Pikes. The most vigorous of them leave their native landscape of cotton-wood and sand-bars along the yellow ditches of the West, and emigrate with a wagon-load of pork and pork-fed progeny across the plains to California. There the miasms are roasted out of them; the shakes warmed away; they will grow rich, and possibly mellow, in the third or fourth generation. ”

“ The Paca is the Cœlogenys Paca of zoologists, and the Cutía the Dasyprocta Aguti, or a local variety of that species. Both differ much from our hare and rabbit, which belong to the same order of animals, their fur being coarse and bristly, and their ears short and broad. Their flesh is widely different in taste from that of our English Rodents. The meat of the Paca, in colour, grain, and flavour, resembles young pork; it is much drier, however, and less palatable than pork. The skin is thick, and boils down to a jelly, when it makes a capital soup with rice. ”

“ When it can be obtained a deer, or a sloth, furnishes a variety for the cooking-pot; and then there is the peccary, so dreaded by the Indian. The peccary, [174] the wild pig of [129] the forest, lives in small herds, and the reason proffered by the Indians for their fear of the animal is that when one is wounded it sets up a loud cry, and the rest of the herd promptly come to its aid and join in attacking the aggressor. This story is universal among the tribes. The peccary has a deceptively harmless appearance. They have not all tusks, and in no case are the tusks very prominent ”

“ As, during the whole pepper-harvest, they feed exclusively on this stimulant, they become exceedingly irritable. The smallest injury is resented with ungovernable rage. A young man suffering from the pepper-fever as it is called, cudgelled another most severely for appropriating a superannuated relative of trifling value, and was only pacified by having a present made him of a pig of that peculiar species of swine called the Peccavi by the Catholic Jews, who, it is well known, abstain from swine’s flesh in imitation of the Mahometan Buddhists. ”

“ Try one of those pickles in the jar there, won’t you. I always like to have a boy enjoy himself when he comes to see me,” said the grocery man, winking to a man who was filling an old fashioned tin box with tobacco out of the pail, who winked back as much as to say, “if that boy eats a pickle on top of them mumps we will have a circus, sure.”
“You can’t play no pickle on me, not when I have the mumps. Ma passed the pickles to me this morning, and I took one mouthful, and like to had the lockjaw. ”

“ The protective coloring of the animal makes it difficult to distinguish among the rocks, and it is commonly heard before it is seen. The sharp, short bleat, almost a chirp or squeak, often 39 repeated at rapid intervals when the pika is alarmed, is distinctive. ”

“ The Pike is so voracious that it will attack and eat fish not very much smaller than itself, for its digestion is so rapid that the head and shoulders of a swallowed fish have been found to be half digested, while the tail was sticking out of the Pike’s mouth. Unless, therefore, the teeth of the Pike were so formed as to resist any retrograde movement on the part of the prey, the fish would starve ”

“ A tiny drop of the venomous liquid accompanying [14] the sting, the needle destined for the inoculation, would therefore serve as a kind of brine or pickle to preserve the meat on which the larva is to feed. But how immensely superior to our own pickling processes is that of the Wasp! We salt, or smoke, or tin foodstuffs which remain fit to eat, it is true, but which are very far indeed from retaining the qualities which they possessed when fresh. ”