Our viands

all the marrow-bones are broken. But these troglodytes were not extravagant cooks, nothing was thrown away which might prove useful. Having split the bones and devoured the marrow, they proceeded to make spear and arrow heads from the splinters, for the capture of fresh game to furnish future feasts, and it is more than probable that they crushed and ate the smaller bones, for this is still the custom among savages. Mr. Borcherds, an early South African traveller, describes a feast among some Bushmen to whom a sheep had been given : he says, ' Each bone was separated from the flesh as cleanly as possible, the bones were crushed, and together with the raw kidneys, distributed amongst the children, who seemed to enjoy the delicacy as much as ours do cakes. The meat was laid on the fire, and when half cooked devoured.' Mr. Lumholtz, in his travels 'Among Cannibals' in Australia, describes a feast of snakes, in which the bones were also crushed and eaten ; and in that singularly interesting legend, denominated ' The Mountain Chant,' given in the Smithsonian Reports^ the hero is repre- sented as killing two rabbits, and pounding them up bones and all with seeds, for food. So that here we have from three parts of the world evidence of the use of crushed bones, and may reasonably infer that the custom was universal, especially in times of scarcity. Sitting at our well-appointed tables, we smile at the primitive devices adopted by savages, yet some of them have hit upon a mode of cooking which may fairly be termed scientific, so well is it calculated to retain the juices of the meat ; as for instance, in Australia, the snakes which furnished the feast described by Lumholtz, were coiled up, tied together, and baked in an oven scooped out of the INTRODUCTION 9 earth, in which a large fire was made, serving to heat several stones. Some of these were removed, and upon the others a large quantity of green leaves or grass was laid, and upon this the snakes, which were covered with more green leaves and more hot stones, and then the earth was pressed down tight over the whole, no steam being allowed to escape. When done, the meat, tender and juicy, was taken out in the leaves which served as a dish. Mr. Lumholtz extols this method of cooking for salt beef and pork, especially when ginger leaves are used,* but the natives reserve it for snakes and human flesh, cooking other things by throwing them on the hot embers like the Bushmen, and eating them half raw. The New Zealanders cook their potatoes in the same kind of earth-oven, which, probably, in cannibal times also served for the long pig in which they delighted. The art of baking in ovens is of great antiquity; the ovens of ancient Egypt are frequently represented in contemporary paintings; and the African savage will scoop out the adhesive earth of ants' nests, or the clay of river courses, to form an oven wherein to bake bread, stopping up the open- ing with wood and clay or cow dung, just as our cottagers used to do with the earth-ovens made at the end of most cottages, at a time when it was the wholesome custom among farm-labourers to make and bake their own bread. Boiling is another primitive mode of cooking, and the method which is still employed in some uncivilised countries, is to take the hide of the slaughtered animal, tie it up so as