Our viands

The very earliest men of whom we have any record — whose weapons were of rough stone, and whose dwellings were in caves and rock shelters, who probably built no houses, and, as far as we know, wore no clothes except the skins of the animals they had slain and devoured — were hunters. Noble game, too, they hunted in those days in Europe, such as can now only be found in the wilds of Africa, and some not even there, for they have perished utterly. There were the cave lion and the cave bear, the great sabre-toothed tiger, the woolly-haired rhinoceros, and the great mammoth, with its long, curved tusks and shaggy coat, known to us only by its skeleton, and by its likeness — drawn by these savage hunters on a piece of its own tusk — until some years ago a great thaw in Siberia revealed the animal in its flesh, where it had lain packed in ice by the hand of nature for many centuries, yet still remaining fresh enough to be devoured by dogs, a fact which might have GAME AND POULTRY 95 V suggested the use of the refrigerating process to the wise men of that day ; but they were so slow in following where nature led, that it has taken half a century to bring frozen meat into the European market. Then there was the reindeer, useful then as now, and abounding at that time in the south of France, instead of in the Arctic regions; but in those remote ages the south of France was itself Arctic in climate. The wild cave men of those days have also left us portraits of the reindeer, and of a little shaggy pony, which they ate also, as well as fish and fowl, for people then were not particular as to the choice of food, and ate whatever they could catch, literally by hook or by crook, for, as they had no guns and no weapons of metal, they had to trust to their own skill and cunning rather than to their weapons for their game, and it seems astonishing that with such imperfect implements they should have succeeded in slaughtering such a huge beast as the mammoth; never- theless, some even now can trap and destroy the elephant and other big game, using for the purpose poisoned arrows and having ingenious methods, whereby the flow of blood from the wound is increased, and, in some cases, the head of the arrow is made to detach itself and the shaft to drag along the ground, entangling itself in the long grass so as to hinder the flight of the wounded animal. Mr. Stanley has described the skill of the little African pigmies in destroying big game with their tiny but beautifully made weapons, and by traps. European game has now dwindled down to small proportions. The mammoth, and other great beasts its contemporaries, are quite extinct; the reindeer has retreated 96 OUR VIANDS to the Arctic circles ; the horse and the ox, the goat and the pig, are no longer game, but domestic animals. There are still a few bears, wolves, and wild boars to be found, and several kinds of deer. The fox — at least in England — can hardly be looked upon as a wild animal, being carefully preserved ; and even of birds, few are now found in the wild state, partridges and pheasants being reared by thousands in poultry yards and turned out to be shot. But in the north, grouse of several kind, blackcock, and capercailzies are still to be found, and wild duck, woodcock, and snipe may fall to the sportsman's gun in the lowlands.