322 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
Philomel who reiterates every Spring her cuckoo cry of Jug- 
jug-jug, Elia pronounces that a hare to be truly palated must 
be roasted ; jugging sophisticates her, whilst in our way it eats 
so “crips,” as Mrs. Minikin, the cook, says. Nash tells in his 
Spring song for that season :— 
** Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing, 
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo.” 
«The ancients must have loved hares, else why adopt the word 
lepores, but for some subtle analogy between the delicate flavour 
of the creature and their finer relishes of wit in what we poorly 
translate pleasantries. In fact, how light of digestion we feel 
after a hare! How tender its processes after swallowing ! 
What chyle it promotes! How etherial, as if its living celerity 
were a type of its nimble coursing through the animal juices!” 
Incidentally elsewhere Lamb says that bullock’s heart is a sub- 
stitute for hare. Certain large hares in the United States are 
‘* Jackass rabbits.” Sam Weller in Pickwick described a fidgety 
invalid as ‘“‘ A genlem’n of the precise and tidy sort who puts 
their feet in little India-rubber fire-buckets wen it’s vet vether, 
and never has no other bosom friends but hare-skins.”’ Piscator, 
in Izaak Walton’s Compleat Angler, teaches Scholar “ there are 
many country people that believe hares change sexes every 
year ; and there be very many learned men think so too, for in 
their dissecting them they find many reasons to incline them to 
that belief.” 
The Rabbit, Lepus Cuniculus, which we know so well in its 
wild state as a most prolific little animal, and of much popularity 
as a food for the working classes, ‘‘ thrives best,” says Fuller, 
“on barren ground, and grows fattest in the hardest frosts ; their 
flesh is fine and wholesome.” Both this animal and the hare 
affect some persons who partake of either, with nettlerash, or 
spasmodic asthma. Rabbit pie made without a hole in the 
top crust to let ptomainic vapours escape, as generated by the 
flesh whilst being baked, has proved actually poisonous in several 
recorded cases. “ Talbotays” was a former sauce taken with 
rabbits and hares, being concocted of the blood, with pepper, 
salt, and ale. In Yorkshire there is a familiar nursery rhyme :— 
* Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit pie, 
Come my ladies, come and buy, 
Else your babies they will cry.” 
