COOKERY. 203 
Journal. “Oh,” was the reply, “they are bought up by the 
Gentiles, and eaten by them!” 
That man is essentially a cooking animal, is a fact borne out 
by the knowledge that cooking utensils have been discovered 
wherever human life has been found to have existed. We all 
believe that fingers were made before forks; but it is not 
generally known that forks were in the first place constructed 
to imitate fingers—originally by the Romans with two. prongs, 
as the finger and thumb, then as three fingers, and later on as 
the whole hand. The English people are indebted to one Tom 
Coryat for introducing the fork amongst them, because of which 
boon he was given the sobriquet “ Furcifer:”” Furca, being really 
a pitchfork. (‘ Expellas naturam furcé : tamen usque recurret.”) 
Not until some time after the Restoration were forks in general 
English use. About Pepys’ time each guest at table was expected 
to bring his own spoon and fork to a meal, and to use it through- 
out without change. During the sixteenth century, at a man of 
position’s table plates could not be provided for all who sat 
down to the meal; and the original trencher was a thick slice 
of bread on which the meat was placed, and which after being 
so used was given to the poor. And even as lately as at the 
beginning of the last century (1810) a bowl of coloured glass 
containing water was placed before each guest, at the end of 
dinner, and the women as well as the men stooped over it, sucked 
up some of the water, rinsed out the mouth, and swilled the 
water back again into the bowl. Such behaviour represented 
the extreme of table refinement amongst our most cultivated 
persons less than a hundred years ago. There is Biblical 
authority for telling how men, in ancient days, used to wipe 
the dishes (2 Kings xxi. 13): “And I will wipe Jerusalem 
as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down.” 
This would seem to show that of old the kitchen was not 
exclusively woman’s kingdom. ; 
Lately a spirited comparison between English and American 
Cookery has been made in some of our leading journals. In 
Brooklyn Life, thus recently sang an unfortunate husband over 
the water :— 
** She’s joined a class, and learn’t to cook, 
Oh! woe! oh! deepest woe! 
She gets it out of a terrible book, 
And her biscuits eat like dough, 
Like dough, 
And her biscuits eat like dough ! ; 
