a whole legion of owls' daughters—must
remain a matter of conjecture or imagination.
Be it rather recorded—as late and
loyal tidings from the shores of Dido—that
the young illustrious visitor who (in healthful
contrast to as terrible a fire of balls and
breakfasts as ever opened upon Midshipman
Royal) recently scrutinised the scenes above
described had his laudable curiosity
rewarded by the discovery of a small but
beautiful relic, which, forwarded to the
Museum, will not excite the less interest from
bearing the name of the Alfred Modax.

          MY BROTHER'S DINNER.

THERE is certainly a conspiracy amongst
scientific men to drag me down to the level
of brutes. I know my humiliating dependence
upon food; and, like old Sir Thomas
Browne, I feel melancholy when I reflect
upon it. Yet I cannot sit in patience while
my old idols are being shattered before my
eyes. I like to see my Milton staring at me
with the fixed look of a cougar in his long
flowing hair; I like to see my Shakespeare
poised with the graceful skill of a tight-rope
dancer, his elbow upon a pedestal, his forefinger
upon his temple; but I do not like to
see them analysed by the irreverent hand of
chemical science, and I do not like to hear
that beef and mutton made them what they
were. I cannot submit, without a struggle
to alter the philosophical dogma, and say, I
eat—therefore I am.

I have just risen from the perusal of a book,
previously remarked upon in this Journal,
by Mr. Simmonds, called the Curiosities of
Animal Food (the materials of which he
has industriously collected and authenticated
from many sources), and as a representative
of universal man I feel considerably depressed.
I am a ravenous, all-devouring glutton.
Inferior creatures are mostly contented with
one kind of food—fish, flesh, or vegetable, as
the case may be—but I can eat almost
everything, except the roof over my head. Living
animals of all kinds I have particularly run
a muck against. I can draw no distinction
between myself and the untutored savage,
for have I not, in a moment of weakness,
admitted him to be a man and a brother?
I was not aware, at the time, of his
peculiarities of diet; but that does not efface the
admission.

I am worse than Noah's Ark—of course, I
mean in my capacity for taking in animals.
I will suppose that I have reached the allotted
term of man's existence—three-score and
ten—that I have been blessed with a good
digestion, and that I have devoured three
meals a-day. Setting aside the forests of
vegetables I have destroyed; the panorama
of my animal consumption would take the
regular exhibition period of two hours to
unroll. There I should stand at one end
like the Ark with open mouth, while every
living creature of the air, the earth, or the
sea, would move slowly on in solemn
procession, disappearing within my all-
devouring jaws. The weight of my individual
nourishment in tons would be something
awful; its value in sterling money might
reach ten thousand pounds; and in one-horse
wagon loads it would number, perhaps, from
eighty to a hundred.

Not content with the flesh of birds, beasts,
fishes, reptiles, and insects, I must seize upon
their bones, and feed upon their skins, even
after the latter have been converted into
articles of clothing. Ivory dust has long
been sold as an excellent article for jellies;
and so have bones, hide clippings, and parchment
shavings. No wonder Professor Liebig
tells me gelatine would not sustain any man
for a month; no wonder he tells me the only
difference between this deceptive luxury and
joiners' glue is its greater price; no wonder
we pity the long army of helpless invalids
who have been fed with this glassy mockery;
no wonder it trembles when it appears upon
a dish, as it thinks what a shameless impostor
it is; for old kid gloves, and older parchment
deeds are often the only ingredients of its
composition. Glue and scraps of gloves,
boiled down with garlic, are eaten by my
Spanish neighbours; and my South Sea
Island brethren have made a good dinner
before now from boiled buckskin breeches
stuffed with seaweed!

What is a dinner? that is the question.
In Siam the answer is given in the shape of
a dish of dried elephant. In Greenland raw
meat prevails, because it produces in the
consumer more warmth than cooked meat. A
slice of raw blubber, or a chunk of frozen
walrus-beef is considered delicious, even by
Englishmen. Frozen seal is a good native
preparation for a long cold journey; but raw
bear is the very best travelling food of all.
The reindeer is a scarce delicacy; the
entrails of the rypen, mixed with fresh
train-oil and berries, compose a mess that is highly
prized; while the favourite Arctic preserve
is made with fresh, rotten, and half-hatched
eggs, crake-berries, and angelica, thrown
together into a sack of seal-skin, filled up
with train-oil. Sledges are very commonly
eaten with infinite relish, because they are
made of dry frozen salmon; which has acquired
an improved (Esquimaux) flavour by
its long use and keeping.

What is a dinner? would be answered by
my brother, the African Bushman, with a
table covered with roots, bulbs, wild garlic,
the core of aloes, the gum of acacias, berries,
the larvae of ants, lizards, locusts, and
grasshoppers; while his twin, the Kaffir, would
produce nothing but a dish of sour, curdled
milk, with a little millet. My brother, the
Indian of Brazil, sustains himself upon rats
and other small vermin, snakes, and alligators;
while another brother, the aboriginal
Australian, feeds upon the opossum, the