all animals dying a natural death
is used as food; in summer it is sun-dried for winter use, because at
that time the Tartars live exclusively on mare's milk which is then
abundant. A cup or two of milk in the morning suffices till evening,
when each man has a little meat. One ram serves as a meal for fifty or a
hundred men. Bones are gnawed till they are burnished, "so that no whit
of their food may come to naught." Genghis Khan enacted that neither
blood nor entrails nor any other part of a beast which might be eaten
should be thrown away.[1134] Scarcity of food among the Tibetan and
Mongolian nomads is reflected in their habit of removing every particle
of meat from the bone when eating.[1135] A thin decoction of hot tea,
butter and flour is their staple food. Many Turkoman nomads, despite
outward appearance of wealth, eat only dried fish, and get bread only
once a month, while for the poor wheat is prohibited on account of its
cost.[1136] The Saharan Tibbus, usually on a starvation diet, eat the
skin and powdered bones of their dead animals.[1137]

The privations and hardships of life in the deserts and steppes
discourage obesity. The Koko-Nor Mongols of the high Tibetan plateau are
of slight build, never fat.[1138] The Bedouin's physical ideal of a man
is spare, sinewy, energetic and vigorous, "lean-sided and thin," as the
Arab poet expresses it.[1139] The nomadic tribesmen throughout the
Sahara, whether of Hamitic, Semitic or Negro race, show this type, and
retain it even after several generations of settlement in the river
valleys of the Sudan. The Bushmen, who inhabit the Kalahari Desert, have
thin wiry forms and are capable of great exertion and privations.[1140]

[Sidenote: Checks to population.]

Though the conquering propensities of nomadic tribes make large families
desirable, in order to increase the military strength of the horde, and
though shepherd folk acquiring new and rich pastures develop patriarchal
families, as did the Jews after the conquest of Canaan, nevertheless the
limited water and food supply of desert and grassland, as well as the
relatively low-grade economy of pastoral life, impose an iron-bound
restriction upon population, so that as a matter of fact patriarchal
families are rare. When natural increase finds no vent in emigration and
dispersal, marriage among nomads becomes less fruitful.[1141] Artificial
limitation of population occurs frequently among desert-dwellers. In the
Libyan