324 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
minutes, but if over-cooked the bird becomes tough, and without 
savour. Serve on toast, and garnish with watercress. 
Retrievers do not like the scent of the woodcock, and will 
frequently decline to bring it in. November and December are 
the woodcock months. 
** A la Saint Michel 
Becasse tombe du ciel.” 
A curious doctrine termed “ Totenism ” was held of old among 
the Greeks, and the North American Indians, this signifying the 
existence of persons who asserted their several claims to descent 
from, and kinship with certain birds, beasts, or vegetables. Where- 
fore because of the particular “totem,” or family association, 
each of such persons would religiously abstain from eating his, or 
her, own kindred creature, or plant. Thus in his Roman Orations, 
Plutarch asks, “‘ Why do the Latins abstain strictly from par- 
taking of the Woodpecker’s flesh ?” (Picus). It was the Roman 
“gens,” the Piceni, which specially took the woodpecker for its 
totem. In Australia we hear of a medicine-man whose clan 
totem through his mother was a kangaroo, but whose individual 
(secret) totem was the tiger-snake, on which account snakes of 
that species would not hurt him. Longfellow in Hiawatha 
refers to this particular custom. 
“And they painted on the grave posts 
*h his own ancestral totem, 
Each the symbol of his household, 
Figures of the bear, and reindeer, 
Of the turtle, crane, and beaver, 
Each inverted as a token 
That the owner was departed.” 
Venison.—The flesh of the deer, is particularly digestible by 
invalids because of its looseness of fibre, and texture, which per- 
mits a special ready access of the gastric juices. But it must not 
be hung long enough to become at all corrupt, so as to engender 
ptomaines afterwards within the stomach, or bowels. Robert 
Lovell (1661) said the flesh of the buck is dry, and causeth piles, 
except used with pepper, cinnamon, and mustard. Venison, 
which is a highly savoury food, consists of albuminates, or 
nutritive solids, nineteen parts, fat two parts, and water seventy- 
nine parts. It was formerly served in Egypt, as by Joseph to 
