ABSTRACT
THE inhabitants of those countries do not allow glutton pelts to be exported to foreign parts for profit’s sake, 1 since they use them as covers in winter to show hospitality to their more honoured guests, revealing perfectly well their belief that they can do nothing finer or nobler than give handsome treatment to good guests at any time or on any occasion. This occurs too during intense cold when among other kindnesses they prepare and offer to their guests beds decked with these precious skins, as I have already described in Bk XVI, Ch. 12, when I wrote about the hospitality of these folk. But I think I should not omit to mention that, if people sleep beneath these covers, they usually experience particular dreams, which seem to have some connection with the life and characteristics of this beast: the way it devours things voraciously, springs ambushes on other animals, or takes care to avoid their attacks. 2 Perhaps this resembles the manner in which those who eat hot spices like ginger or pepper dream they are on fire, and those who munch sugar imagine they are drowning, as Plutarch states in his Problems? 3 There appears to be yet another secret of Nature attaching to these skins: anyone clad in them exhibits not the slightest trace of satiety, however much he drinks and eats.
