superior to pork by connoisseurs, having a
mixed flavour, which partakes of the joint
excellences of both beef and pork. The fat is
as white as snow, and "if a man were to drink
a quart of it," says one amiable enthusiast,
"it would never rise on his stomach!" The
tongue and hams are cured, but the head is
accounted worthless, and thrown away.

The badger tastes like wild boar; the
kangaroo is not inferior to venison, and
kangaroo-tail soup is better than half the
messes which pass in London under the name
of ox-tail soup. Hashed wallaby is a dish no
one need disdain, and a small species of
kangaroo, called pademelon, is as good as any
hare ever cooked. An Australian native
banquet is an odd mixture. Kangaroos and
wallabies, opossums and flying squirrels,
kangaroo-rats, wombats and bandicoots, all
of them more or less of the venison type,
represent the pièces de resistance; while rats,
mice, snakes, snails, large white maggots,
called cobberra, worms and grubs, are the
little dishes and most favoured entrées. A
nice fat marmot is a treat—why not ? They
are pure feeders. An Esquimaux strings
mice together as a Londoner strings larks,
and eats them with equal gusto.

The musk rat of Martinique is eaten,
musky as it is, and indescribably loathsome
to a European; and the sleek rats of the
sugar-cane fields make one of the most
delicious fricassees imaginable—so tender, plump,
cleanly, and luscious are they. Sugar
plantations generally maintain a professional
ratcatcher, but some people think that rat
produces consumption, so discourage the sport.
The Chinese are in a rat paradise in
California, where the rats are incredibly large,
highly flavoured, and very abundant; they
make a dish of rats' brains equal to the
famous plat of nightingales' tongues spoken
of in a certain Roman history; and rat-soup
is thought by all right-minded Celestials to
beat ox-tail or gravy-soup hollow.

Mr. Albert Smith gave his impressions of
Chinese fare as consisting, for the most part,
of "rats, bats, snails, bad eggs, and hideous
fish dried in the most frightful attitudes,"
with the addition of a soup of "large
caterpillars boiled in a thin gravy with onions."
India is now about to supply China with
salted rats, which it is hoped will open a new
field of commercial enterprise and fortune
quite unparalleled. The bandicoot, dear to
Australian palates, is the pig-rat; and the
vaulting rat, or jerboa, is of the same order.
The Indians eat the beaver, which is said to
be like pork; and porcupine is a prime
favourite with the Dutch, the Hottentots,
the Australians, the Hudson Bay trappers,
and the Italians. Porcupine is a cross between
fowl and sucking pig, and accounted exceedingly
nutritious.

Elephants' feet, pickled in strong toddy
vinegar and cayenne pepper, are considered
in Ceylon an Apician luxury. The trunk is
said to resemble buffalo's hump, and the fat
is a godsend to the Bushmen, who will go
almost any distance for a portion.
Hippopotamus fat, too, is a treat; when salted it is
thought superior to our best breakfast bacon;
and the flesh is both palatable and nutritious;
the fat is used instead of butter for making
puddings, and, indeed, for all the ordinary
uses of butter. The young tapir is like beef,
and the peccary and musk hog are both
superior to the common porker, if care is taken
to cut out the fetid orifice in the back. Pig
—the pig for which Charles Lamb would
almost dare a crime, and the immortal Chinaman
burnt down his house—the pig of our
childhood, our maturity, and our old age—
has detractors and calumniators; surely no
man who has once tasted could ever forego
again. America is the great pork-shop of
the universe; not even excepting Ireland,
where the pig element is also strongly
developed. In America they speak of pickled
pork by the acre, and in Ohio alone they use
about three-quarters of a million of swine
yearly. In Spain pig is game, lean and
highly flavoured, without fat or unctuousness,
devoid of any capability for bacon, and without
a rasher or a cheek available for breakfast.
It is fondly thought that sausages come
from this member of the pachydermatous
family; but sausages are deceptive, and
sometimes contain as much horse flesh and donkey
flesh as their more legitimate basis. Mr.
Richardson, of Manchester, gave evidence in.
Mr. Scholefield's committee, to the effect that
horse flesh is mixed with potted meats, and
enters largely into the composition of collared
brawn, sausages, and polonies; and that,
indeed, it is of material use in these preparations,
as, being harder and more fibrous than
pork, it binds together the whole, which else
would be inclined to run to waste and water.

Birds are of large importance in the
supplies of human food: and not only birds but
birds' nests as well—at least with the
Chinese, whose dainties are always peculiar.
These nests are brought from Java and
Sumatra, the gathering taking place thrice in
the year, and being inaugurated by solemn
ceremonies. The nests are like fibrous, ill-
concocted isinglass, inclining to red, about the
size of a goose's egg, and as thick as a silver
spoon. They hang upon the rocks like
(according to Mr. Albert Smith) watch-
pockets. When dry they are brittle and
wrinkled, and are sold for twice their weight
in silver. The best are the whitest and
cleanest; but even with these there is
enormous labour in preparing them for the
Chinese market, the end and aim of the trade
being a soup with these nests floating about like
lumps of soft, mucilaginous jelly. This nest,
which is of the sea-swallow (Hirundo
esculenta), is the only edible one known. Many are
the delicious morsels afforded by birds. The
beccafico in the fig season; the bronze-winged
pigeon of Australia when the acacia seeds are