ripe; the young, fat, hideous diablotin or
goat-sucker, if taken when a tender nestling, and
the same bird when older, if taken when the
palms are in fruit; the rice bunting of South
Carolina, when the rice is ripening in the
field; and the ortolan, mere lump of idealised
fat as it is—these are among the most
celebrated of the smaller tit-bits, not forgetting
the snipes and woodcocks of our own land.

Some people eat insects. The grub of
the palm weevil, about the size of one's
thumb, is much favoured in the East and
West Indies; and the grubs of most beetles,
find their admirers and an Å“sophagal
tomb in some or other quarter of the globe.
Locusts are a substitute for grain with the
Arabs, and are ground up into a kind of
bread; besides being salted, smoked, and
plainly boiled or roasted. The Moors think
a fine fat locust superior even to pigeon, and
the Hottentots make a coffee-coloured soup
of their eggs. Grasshoppers and cicadas are
also eaten; and, indeed, the problem seems
to be to find any living thing which does not
pass through the furnace for the benefit of
some one's bill of fare. The white ants—
termites—are said to be good eating; so are
ants generally, giving a pleasant acid to the
preparation, whatever it may be. They are
distilled with rye in Sweden for the purpose
of flavouring inferior brandy. The grub, or
larva, of the termites, is like the most
delicious bit of cream; but the lusciousness of a
large white fat maggot, precious to the
Australian native, is said to be without compare.
Stupid native!—he devours the grubs of the
most valuable and the rarest moths and
butterflies; and certain species are almost
extinct, in the plumed state, because the
thirsty, parched, unentomological black seizes
on that bit of living marrow, the grub,
wherever he finds it. The thrifty Chinese
first wind-off the cocoon, then send the
chrysalis of the silkworm to table. It is a
pleasant adjunct in a feast where half-hatched
eggs, sea-slugs, rats, frogs, and dogs are the
principal dainties. Spiders are delicacies of
the dessert kind to the Bushman; and Lalande
and Anna Maria Schurman used to eat them
like nuts, which it is said they resemble.
Snails have their partisans, and Murillo's
Seville boy ate a snail pie while he was
being painted. Even we rear a certain
large white race, which we sell in Covent
Garden, to be made into soup and jelly
for the consumptive, who believe them
to be almost a specific for that complaint.
The Chinese gloat over sea-slug or bèche de
mer, and a dish of a certain sea-worm is one
of the events of life to the dwellers in
the Islands of the Southern Pacific. The
people of Chili eat barnacles as we eat whelks;
the Hottentots devour handfuls of roasted
caterpillars which taste like sugared cream
or almond paste, and stand to them in the
place of sugar-plums and comfits. What a
blessing it would be if we could persuade
our rising population to exchange daff and
mineral-coloured lozenges, for nice young
harmless caterpillars roasted in the ashes.
Think how the farmers would gain by the
exchange!

DISHONOURED.

ON the evening of Sunday, the thirtieth
of October, in the year seventeen hundred
and ninety-two, a hackney-coach conveyed
a party of four persons, with a small
quantity of baggage, from Billingsgate Wharf
to a distant part of London. The weather
was wet and cold, and, as the coach slowly
laboured through the foggy, deserted streets,
the great city presented an unusually cheerless
aspect. But had it been ten times
more dismal, the travellers would have
uttered no complaint; for they had arrived,
at last, in a place of safety, and the sense of
security outweighed, for the moment, every
other consideration. The perils of a stormy
passage from Dunkerque on board a crazy,ill-
found smack, had been their latest discomfort;
but the sea-risk was nothing in their
estimation to the dangers which they had
left behind. Nor can this be wondered at,
when it is explained that they were refugees
from Paris at a moment when, frightful as
recent events had been, the prospect of the
future, was even yet more terrible. Glad
enough, then, they were to find themselves in
a place which was not only a present asylum,
but, to one of their number, the haven towards
which his hopes had long been directed.

This person was Monsieur Morin, the head
of the party, a gentleman some fifty years of
age. His companions were his daughter,
Adelaide, a beautiful girl, just turned of
nineteen; her old bonne, Marguérite, more
housekeeper than nurse, more family friend
than either; and a middle-aged, confidential
man-servant, whose name was Louis.

Monsieur Morin was no stranger in London;
and, what was then a rare accomplishment,
could speak a little English: enough
to enable the hackney-coachman to
understand whither he wished to be driven, and to
prevent the Jehu from charging very much
more than double the proper fare, when, the
wearisome journey at an end, the vehicle
stopped at the door of a moderately-sized
house in a respectable portion of the town.

It appeared that Monsieur Morin was
expected; servants being in readiness, fires
burning, and other preparations made for
the reception of himself and family. The
trim appearance of the house, the size
and disposition of the rooms, rising in five
pairs from basement to attic, the scanty hall
and narrow staircase, offered a striking
contrast to the home which Adelaide had quitted
in the Rue de Mirabeau; where everything
was large, lofty, and en suite. But, if her new
abode seemed strange to her unaccustomed
eyes, it was at least free from painful associations,