SWEETBREADS. 677 
greased tin, or plate, with the paste; mix the Treacle and 
bread-crumbs together, and pour out on the paste; cover with 
strips of the paste, and bake for half an hour.” When Alice, 
at the end of The Looking Glass, was made Queen at last by 
general consent, a shrill voice was heard singing from the 
Castle, and hundreds of other voices joined in the chorus :— 
“ Then fill up the glasses as quick as you can, 
And sprinkle the tables with buttons, and bran ; 
Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea, 
And welcome. Queen Alice with thirty times three ! 
Then fill up the glasses with treacle, and ink, 
Or anything else that is pleasant to drink ; 
Mix sand with the cider, and wool with the wine, 
And welcome Queen Alice with ninety times nine!” 
The good old-fashioned ‘‘ Treacle posset,” taken hot at bedtime, 
when a catarrhal cold begins, has been told of explicitly in 
Kitchen Physic. It promotes free perspiration, whilst the lactic 
acid of the curdled milk induces sleep ; furthermore, the Treacle 
acts as a gentle laxative. A posset is so named from the Welsh 
** nosel,”” curdled milk. Sometimes cider is used instead of 
wine for making the steaming draught. 
SWEETBREADS. 
Tue throat gland (Thymus) of the calf is the true Sweetbread ; 
but what is known anatomically as the Pancreas, or Stomach- 
bread, passes likewise commonly under the name of Sweetbread 
as supplied by the butcher. Each of these is good for invalids 
as a light food, easily digested, as long as the animal killed to 
supply them has still lived on milk, but they change their 
character when the calf begins to eat grass, and hay. It is the 
Pancreas, or Stomach-bread, which has a function to digest 
starches, and fats, after they leave the stomach, and when they 
first reach the intestines. This Pancreas secretes a fermenting 
principle which may be collected from the animal, and procured 
through the chemist as Pancreatin, for mingling with sugar of 
milk, or with cane sugar, so as to digest either starches or fats 
outside the body; also it may be mixed with preparations of 
alcohol (rum, cognac, or wine), and drunk as a nutritive, stimu- 
lating beverage ; but these admixtures are insidious as to their 
intoxicating effects, because their absorption is rapid, so that 
