wombat, the wallaby, the bandicoot, and the
bounding kangaroo. My Chinese brother
gets fat upon worms, sea-slugs, horses, black
frogs, unhatched, putrid ducks and chickens,
rotten eggs, dogs and puppies, besides the
aristocratic and costly birds'-nests. The
daily bread of my brother, the Dyak of
Borneo, is sometimes a snake, sometimes an
alligator (if small), and sometimes a monkey.
My Abyssinian brother, I am sorry to say,
leads a very unsteady life, and makes
himself positively drunk upon various kinds of
raw flesh. My settler brother in Australia
sometimes tries the food of his aboriginal
relative, but not with any great success.
He shoots down the flying-fox, an animal
of the bat species, but as it looks like
a demon when served up, with large, black,
leathery wings, it is generally sent away
untouched.

What is dinner? is answered by the
African epicure with a tender young monkey,
highly seasoned and spiced, and baked in a
jar set in the earth, with a fire over it, in
gipsy-fashion. It is answered by the low
Arab with a feast of hyena, although
the smell of the carcase is so rank and
offensive, that even dogs leave it with
disgust. It is answered by the natives of
North America with a pole-cat, although the
animal is considered too pestilent for human
food. It is answered in Italy with a fox; and
in the Arctic regions again with a fox-pie. It
is answered by the Indians of North America
with a dish of prairie-wolf; by the natives of
Demerara with a dish of sloth; by the
Hottentots with a dish of lion; and by the
natives of the Malay Peninsula with a dish of
tiger.

What is a dinner? is answered by the
bill of fare of a San Francisco eating-
house:

     Grimalkin steaks      ...   ...   ...   25 cents
     Bow-wow soup        ...   ...   ...   12   ,,
     Roasted bow-wow   ...   ...   ...   18   ,,
     Bow-wow pie    ...   ...   ...   ...     6   ,,
     Stews catified   ...   ...   ...   ...     6   ,,

The question is answered by the Dutch and
Hottentots with a dish of smoked porcupines;
by the Africans with baked elephant's paws;
by Bushmen and Dutch Colonists with a dish
of salted hippopotami; and by the
Abyssinians with a dish of rhinoceros.

In France the question will be soon
answered (if Monsieur Saint Hilaire should
overcome the general prejudice) with countless
dishes of horseflesh; and in Tartary it is
already answered with a feast of donkeys.
Greeks and Romans have found the ass
palatable before this; and Central Asia revels in
it to this hour. In Barbary it is answered
by a dish of camel's-flesh; and by the
Hottentots with a dish of giraffe, and giraffe-
marrow. It is answered in Southern Guinea
by a dish of boa-constrictor; and in Ceylon
with a feast of the destructive Anaconda.
It is answered at the Havana by a dish of
shark; by the Barotse of Central Africa by
a dish of alligator; and by Dr. Livingstone
(in a case of need) by two mice, and a light,
blue-coloured mole.

My brother feeds upon more insects in
different parts of the world than is generally
supposed. The larva, or grub of one of the
species of beetles which infest cocoa-nut
trees, is considered a great delicacy in British
Guiana; and it is dressed by frying in a
pan.

The Goliath beetles are roasted and eaten
by my brother in South America and Western
Africa, although I, as an entomologist, have
at one time given fifty pounds for a specimen
of these insects, and am now willing to give
five guineas. The untutored savage here
goes beyond Heliogabalus.

In Africa my brother revels in locusts,
salted, smoked, roasted, boiled and fried.
They are carried into the towns by waggonloads,
like poultry when brought to market.
In California, my brother, the digger Indian,
regales himself with grasshoppers roasted
in a bag with salt; or sometimes made
into a grasshopper soup; and in Siam the
greatest luxury that my brother can give
me is a dish of ants' eggs, curried, rolled in
green leaves, and mingled with shreds of fat
pork.

In Ceylon my brother feasts upon bees;
in Africa (as a Bushman) he eats the caterpillar
of the butterfly, and in China he
sends to table the chrysalis of the
silkworm.

In New Caledonia my brother seeks for
a spider, nearly an inch long, which he eats,
after having roasted it over a fire; and in
France, America, Tuscany, and Austria, he
feeds, more or less largely, upon boiled
snails.

In Samoa, Navigator's Islands, South
Pacific Ocean, my brother watches for the
sea-worm, which in size may be compared
to very fine straw, and which he eats, both
dressed and undressed with extraordinary
avidity.

Such are only some few of the many
delicacies in which my brother indulges in
different parts of the world; most of them when
brought to table being very slightly improved
by the art of the butcher or the cook. Nearer
home there are many mysteries of diet which
science and investigating industry have not
yet been able to explain. Although every
other part of the dead horses, annually killed
in our knackers' yards, has been satisfactorily
accounted for,—their hearts and tongues have
never yet been traced.

My brother, under some conditions of
existence, feeds upon arsenic; under others
upon an unctuous kind of earth; and, under
others upon sea-weed and rattlesnake-soup.
These things are his daily bread, although
they are not mine, and while I, in the pride of
my shallow civilisation, am laughing or