1883. 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



61 



of Russia, was entertained in New York ; when the 

 foreign commissioners to the great Centennial had 

 their farewell banquet in St. George's Hall, with 

 President Grant in the chair ; bills of banquets, 

 public and private ; of great hotel dinners in the 

 Old World and the new ; of restaurants, American 

 and continental; of dishes ranging all the way 

 from plain 'pork and beans' to 'sante de daisans 

 iiu fumet de Gibier.' Some of these bills of fare 

 are well worthy of the closest attention, whether 

 regarded from a literary or an epicurean stand- 

 point; and, as a curiosity, the following bill of fare 

 at the banquet to His Imperial Majesty the Sultan 

 of Turkey, served at the Guildhall, London, during 

 his visit, is worthy of some study : 



"Potage poutoisc a I'Albion ; potage a la Vic- 

 toria. 



"Ris de veau a la Lucullus; filets de poulets a 

 I'ecarlate ; cotelettes aux haricots verts ; croustades 

 a la reine. 



"Cailles a la Macedoine; crevettes en caisses, 

 aspics de foies gras de Strasbourg; salade a la 

 Russe; filets de soles a la \^enitienne; buisson de 

 trufifes de Perigord ; chartreuse a la Pariseinne; 

 homard a la Venitienne. 



"Saumon a la royale; galantine de volaille aux 

 truffes; pate a la Francaise; jambon; pulets rotis; 

 lanuge de boeuf ; carre d'agneaux aux concombres; 

 filet de bosuf a la Choisy. 



"Celestine de fraises; peches a la Belle Vue; 

 gelee au vin de Madere; gateau a la Princesse; 

 ananas aux croutons ; compote d'abricots. 



" ' I find ' said Mr. Murrey, as the writer hastily 

 closed the last of his volumes of his collection of 

 bills of fare, ' I find that there is even great differ- 

 ence in the tastes of Americans who come from 

 various sections of this country. Now a Phila- 

 delphian will call for terrapin, calve's head a la 

 secret, fillet de boeuf, etc.; the Bostonians, although 

 it sounds so like satire to say so, do actually want 

 pork and beans, when away from home ; if not 

 that, then rare roast beef seems to be their favor- 

 ite diet ; the Western men, too, are great beef-eat- 

 ers, and are fond of fowl and game — solid food 

 generally ; Southern men are, as a rule, vegeta- 

 rians. They are great salad eaters, and they can 

 appreciate a salad when it is well made. Lamb is 

 a familiar dish with them, and they can ask for it 

 in a score of different w^ays. By-the-by, how many 

 kinds of salads do you think there are ? ' 



"The reporter guessed a dozen. 



"'There are hundreds,' continued Mr. Murrey, 

 enthusiastically. 'Yes, hundreds. Why people 

 know scarcely anything of this subject. Do you 

 know that over one hundred dishes in different 

 styles can be served of Indian corn ? Why this 

 subject is inexhaustible.' 



"The reporter admitted the latter proposition. 



"Mr. IVIurrey continued: 'Men come in here 

 who have traveled all over the world, they ask for 

 a certain dish, and not one of the waiters can im- 

 agine what they mean. They come to me. There 

 are thirty-six hundred different dishes, and it is 

 hard to keep the run of it. But we find it out. Oh, 

 yes ; we have all kinds of men to deal with. When 

 Dom Pedro was here he asked for some queer 

 dishes, but he always expressed himself delighted. 



People have got over that old idea of crowding 

 a hundred dishes on one bill of fare. It is not 

 considered en regie now. A few clever dishes, 

 well cooked, and of the very finest quality that 

 can be got, is what is wanted now. Ten dollars 

 per head is about the outside price for a banquet 

 nowadays, but twenty was not considered exorb- 

 itant three or four years ago; of course that in- 

 cludes wines. And speaking of wines — ' 



" At this point the reporter begged to be excused. 

 The sight of ten thousand bills of fare and five 

 hundred cookery books was enough in one after- 

 noon, and the wine question was postponed. The 

 interview, however, demonstrated that Philadelphia 

 contained the champion collector — so far as is at 

 present known — in this department of literature." 



Mss. Typographical Errors.— .\nnoying as 

 they must always be to the author, are not always 

 without a show of excuse on the part of the compos- 

 itor. " Had " can be written so as to be perfectly 

 made, and yet have the appearance of "has" to the 

 typo, and "e'er" to look exactly hke "e'en." Of 

 course, if the compositor thought of anything else 

 than to pick up each letter, he would know right 

 from wrong by the sense. But when there is a 

 choice, the wrong path is generally chosen ; and 

 this is what happened in Mr. Harding's acrostic. 



Early History of Garden Flowers. — The 

 Florist and Pomologist, in a kindly notice of the 

 late Edward Meehan, remarks : " He was one of 

 the earlier improvers of the fuchsia and other gar- 

 den flowers. His son. Professor Thomas Meehan. 

 is Professor of Botany in the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences of Philadelphia." 



It may be worth noting that the improvement of 

 the dahlia was among the earliest of his hobbies. 

 " Springfield Rival," perhaps, among the first to 

 bring this flower up to the florist's standard, was 

 one of his raising. 



He used to experiment largely with seedling 

 { chrysanthemums, but he took one called " Web- 

 ber's Queen " as his standard of excellence, and 

 could never feel that he raised one equal to it. 

 I The first hybrid fuchsia ever raised, was proba- 

 j bly "St. Clare." Fuchsia fulgens was introduced 

 I from Brazil about 1840. At any rate, in 1841 it 

 I bloomed at St. Clare, and was used as the male 

 parent. The female parent. Fuchsia longiflora, 

 was still standing, making a plant probably fif- 

 teen or twenty feet high when the writer saw it 

 four years ago. 



I The seedlings bloomed the following year, " St. 



I Clare " being considered the best of them. So 



strict was Mr. Meehan's idea of honor that he re- 



; fused money offers for the plant, because the 



work on it was done in his employer's time, and it 



