Our viands

starving followers hunted foxes and the great Polar bears, shows how hunger will whet the appetite ; and certainly, if the choice lay between old boots, skins, and candle ends, and a seal steak, or piece of whale, there is no doubt which would be taken. We are told 'the seal, when young, is excellent, and as a material for soup is quite equal to the hare ; while the skin of any of the Cetacea, especially that of the whalebone whale, if boiled down to a jelly, is a dish fit " to set before a king." It is often sent in hermetically- closed tins from Greenland to Christian IX., of Denmark, and therefore has in reality that destination/ When, however, we turn to countries where food is plentiful, we are surprised at the singularities of taste in the choice of viands. Take, for instance, China, with its fatted dogs, its bird-nest soup, and trepang, all of which seem to us disgusting, yet doubtless had we been bred in China we should have esteemed them delicacies, as the Chinese do. There is no reason why dogs should not be good eating when well and carefully fed ; but we from time immemorial have made of them such pets and companions that to eat them would seem like cannibalism. As to the birds' nests, they are of a peculiar kind, made of a gelatinous substance, and might probably be esteemed a delicacy by ourselves, were they not too scarce for export. Rats and mice are also relished by the Celestials, and in the account of the astonishing escape from death of some entombed miners in America, we read that they managed to preserve life by catching and eating the rats which came to prey upon them. This was, of course, a case of dire necessity ; but an African traveller tells of a little Bushman, who picked up the mice which had been caught, and after putting them in the hot UNAPPRECIATED TRIFLES 147 ashes for a few moments, devoured them greedily half-raw, entrails and all. There is no one in England so poor as to eat these rodents willingly, but we remember hearing a French gentleman relate how, during the siege of Paris, he and his companions were attracted by a savoury smell in a restaurant, and determined w&te qui coute to satisfy their hunger with the appetising delicacy. Upon paying a good round sum they secured the dish, and learnt with surprise that they had partaken of a ragout of rats. This was, of course, an exceptional dish ; but the French habitually indulge in some viands which we despise, as, for instance, frogs. Of these, the hind legs only are taken, skinned, and the claws twisted together. In this form they resemble delicate little lamb cutlets, and are, as we can testify, extremely palatable. Then, all along the sea coasts of France and Italy may be seen the octopus occupying a place in the fishermen's baskets, and often boiled in cauldrons of oil in the streets, and taken out to be offered for sale to the passer-by, always with the recommendation, ' It is good, very good; ' and, indeed, it smells good, and is said to enter largely into the savoury soups at the hotels.