60 NOTES ON FIELDS AND CATTLE. 



a Dunstable lark is supposed to give the human 

 epicure. 



I make digression to remark here that more is due 

 to the influence of food than folk generally imagine 

 who enjoy it. Its celebrated flavour Epping butter 

 owes to the cows feeding, in summer, on the wild 

 aromatic plants that abound upon the shrubby 

 pastures of Epping Forest ; as the arbutus skewer 

 gives traditionary, but, I think, imperceptible, flavour 

 to the Killarney salmon steak. Herbs, beyond a 

 doubt, affect the milk of cows ; as, for instance, the 

 turnip and the pestilent wild onion. The milk of 

 the Hebridean cow, feeding upon the sea-shore fuci, 

 is said to yield delicious butter. The cheese they 

 have derives a rare sweet fragrance from the favour 

 shown it in the making — rose-leaves, cinnamon, 

 mace, cloves, lemon, being mixed with the rennet. 

 Small blame to it for being prized under such pro- 

 vocative circumstances ! 



In Ross, by the way, they have a singular practice 

 of burying the cheeses, separately, within the high- 

 water mark, for several days, in order to give them a 

 blue colour and a rich taste. " May I be there to 

 see!" there is, I fear, many a schoolboy would ex- 

 claim with Gilpin. The canvas-back duck of America 

 becomes the savoury dish it is from feeding on the 

 wild celery. The abundant small black trout in 

 Loch Katrine are coloured by the peat draining. 

 With a view to improve their flesh, the French feed 

 on hempseed the quails they send over to the London 

 market. We have long supposed that the sweet blue 

 moth, fluttering over the ripening flax crop, inhales 



