37 

 CHAPTER III. 



FOOD PRODUCTS. 



THE Englishman is so conservative in the matter of food 

 that it takes a considerable time even to induce him to give 

 a trial to any article with which he is unacquainted, and a 

 much longer period before he will accept it as a regular, or 

 even an occasional, contribution to his diet. What he eats 

 when travelling on the Continent, or in foreign lands, his 

 soul abhors when he returns to his native shores ; therefore 

 new food products are not by any means abundant, and if, 

 perchance, they do occasionally appear in our markets, they 

 are looked upon only as a novelty to be recorded in some 

 journal, and again lost sight of, at least for a time. 



The greatest strides made in the commerce of food 

 products during the present century have been in the 

 development of already existing sources. It is not within 

 our scope to trace the progress of these articles, but we may, 

 perhaps, legitimately, but briefly, point out to what extent 

 steam has assisted in placing within our reach foreign and 

 colonial produce of vegetable origin. Take, for example, 

 the increased and ever-increasing quantities of fresh and 

 preserved fruits, the latter hermetically sealed in tins, that 

 are now poured into our markets at all seasons of the year, 

 by which means our tables are furnished with fruits all the 

 year round that but a very few years since we could enjoy 

 only at certain seasons. The pine-apple is one illustration of 

 this ; fresh fruits being brought from the West Indies by fast- 

 going vessels, and the preserved whole fruits in tins from 

 Singapore, Bahamas, and Natal, the flavour of which is 

 almost, if not quite, equal to that of the fresh fruits. But 

 a very short time since, tinned pine-apples were not known 

 to appear on the tables of even the well-to-do middle class, 



