doubt, suffered much, but, nevertheless, by
his sufferings has benefited the human race,
and undoubtedly advanced civilisation. In
buying a hare, however, throw overboard all
sentiment, and concentrate your mind upon this
simple question: Is there a small nut in the
first joint of his fore claw? If it be there, the
creature is still young and inexperienced—if
it be gone, concentrate your mind again,
whatever labour the effort may cost you, and
turn the claws sideways. If the joint crack,
that is a sign that, though not so young as
he might be, the hare is still tender. If
there be no nut, and moreover the claw do
not crack, the hare is only fit to stew, or for
soup, and. he won't be, even in that way, so good
as he might be. Everybody has some favourite
dish, for which, in a weak moment, he might be
induced to sell his reversionary interests, as the
patriarch weakly did for the mess of pottage—
that dish is in our case leveret, savoury meat,
sweet, tender, encouraging. Of hares, those
three-parts grown are the best. Mountain
hares are better than hares from downs. This
amiable creature adapts himself to almost any
sauce; and, in spite of the learned opinion of
Sancho Panza's Baratarian physician, who
thought the meat terrestrial and melancholic, is
one of the most digestible of viands.

The rabbit is, to his cousin the hare, what the
fowl is to the pheasant. His flesh is white and
more juicy, but is more insipid. If a hare's
ear tear easily, his flesh will be tender. Dr.
Kitchener has observed, that if the jaws of a
rabbit yield to the pressure of the thumb and
finger, the rabbit is young; if old, the jaw will
not break. This is worth remembering.

The wild rabbit, browsing at daybreak and
twilight on wild thyme, marjoram, and such
odoriferous herbs, unconsciously devotes the
best part of his life to educating himself for
the spit and the saucepan. The Parisians, who
justly despise tame rabbits, as cat-like
monstrosities, tasting only of the cabbage on which
they have been nurtured, disguise rabbit in half
a hundred artful and picturesque ways, each
better than the other: à la broche, en gibelotte,
fricassée, à la Polonaise, à l' Italienne, à
l'Espagnole, à la Rossane, au coulis de lentilles,
in puddings, in the shape of eye-glasses and in
curling-papers. One eminent writer on French
cooking observes, that various celebrated old
methods of cooking rabbits have now become
unfashionable; but after all their kick-shaws,
between ourselves there is nothing better
than the sterling old English ways: the young
rabbit fried in bread-crumbs, and its dryness
relieved with liver sauce; the young boiled rabbit,
moist and white, soused in white floods of thick
and odorous onion sauce.

     You may flavour and mingle each dish as you will,
     Yet the rabbit with onions is best of them still.

Another wrinkle. Most people like hare-
soup, undoubtedly a thick, brown, high-flavoured
compound; and when badly made, rather a
burnt, pasty, and oppressive soup; still, if fair
play be shown, highly nutritious, and of a
strong individual character. But on the word
of an old epicure, of now seventy summers, hare-
soup cannot be compared to rabbit, which must
be first fried and then boiled down with slow
consideration, after the usual conditions. It is
milder and more balmy than hare-soup, and
possesses a much finer and more exquisite
flavour. We know no game-soup that can
equal it.

In Patrick Lamb's highly curious Royal Cookery,
1710, the master cook of Charles, James,
William, and Anne—he must have had some
experience in delicacies—speaks very
favourably of a now forgotten dish, which he is
pleased to entitle "Rabbit Surprise." Let us
dig up the recipe from the small Pompeii of
one hundred and twenty-seven pages, for it
sounds promising.

Cut all the meat from the backs of two half-
grown rabbelets (that is not a bad word for
young rabbit?), cut it in small slices, and toss
it up in six spoonfuls of cream, with a bit
of butter the size of half an egg (pullet's,
not ostrich's), and a little nutmeg, pepper,
and salt. Thicken this with a dust of flour,
boil it up and set it to cool, then take some
forced-meat made of veal, bacon, suet, the
crumbs of French roll, raw eggs, parsley, onion,
pepper, salt, and nutmeg, toss it up like the
meat aforesaid, and place it round your rabbits.
Then fill up the trough in the backs of the
patient creatures with the prepared minced-
meat and sauce, smooth it square at both ends,
brush the top with a raw egg, and sprinkle
grated bread over. Place them on a mazarine
or patty-pan, and bake them for three-quarters
of an hour, till they are a gentle brown. The
sauce required is butter, gravy, and lemon; the
garnishing, orange and fried parsley. By no
means bad, we are strongly inclined to think!

The wild duck's bones are true thermometers,
and regulate his winter flights. Even
the French cooks allow that this inimitable and
venerated bird is best eaten plain roasted, with
a few tears of lemon dropped upon his brown
smoking breast. The Bernardin monks were,
however, fond of him in an appetising hash,
the recipe for which was a special secret of the
devout order. The finest sauce we know for
duck, or any wild fowl, is one that Dr. Kitchener
derived from Major Hawker, the celebrated
sporting writer. It is perfect. Man wants
but little here below, but this sauce he must
have. A celebrated cook of 1816 used to
charge a fee of a guinea for disclosing
it. It would make even a politician who had
ratted swallow all his early speeches. Here it
is, for nothing. "One glass of port wine, one
spoonful of caviare, one ditto of catsup, one
ditto of lemon-juice, one slice of lemon-peel, one
large shalot sliced, four grains of dark cayenne
pepper (not Venetian red and brickdust), and
two blades of mace. Scald and strain this, and
add it to the pure gravy of the bird. Serve the
duck (if it be a duck) in a silver dish, with a
lamp under it, and let this sauce gently simmer