64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



food. I have no doubt whatever that it may. It could be done at 

 once if the incrusting resinous matter were removed, for pure cellulose 

 in the form of cotton and linen rags has been converted into sugar ar- 

 tificially in the laboratory of the chemist ; and in the ripening of fruits 

 such conversion is effected on a large scale in the laboratory of Nature. 

 A Jersey pear, for example, when full grown in autumn is little better 

 than a lump of acidulated wood. Left hanging on the leafless tree, 

 or gathered and carefully stored for two or three months, it becomes 

 by Nature's own unaided cookery the most delicious and delicate pulp 

 that can be tasted or imagined. 



Certain animals have a remarkable power of digesting ligneous tis- 

 sue. The beaver is an example of this. The whole of its stomach, and 

 more especially that secondary stomach the coecum, is often found 

 crammed or plugged with fragments of wood and bark. I have 

 opened the crops of several Norwegian ptarmigans, and found them 

 filled with no other food than the needles of pines, upon which they 

 evidently feed during the winter. The birds, when cooked, were 

 scarcely eatable on account of the strong resinous flavor of their flesh. 



I may here, by-the-way, correct the commonly-accepted version of 

 a popular story. We are told that when Marie Antoinette was in- 

 formed of a famine in the neighborhood of the Tyrol, and of the 

 starving of some of the peasants there, she replied, " I would rather 

 eat pie-crust " (some of the story-tellers say " pastry ") " than starve." 

 Thereupon the courtiers giggled at the ignorance of the pampered 

 princess who supposed that starving peasants had such an alternative 

 food as pastry. The ignorance, however, was all on the side of the 

 courtiers and those who repeat the story in its ordinary form. The 

 princess was the only person in the court who really understood the 

 habits of the peasants of the particular district in question. They cook 

 their meat, chiefly young veal, by rolling it in a kind of dough made 

 of sawdust, mixed with as little coarse flour as will hold it together ; 

 then place this in an oven or in wood-embers until the dough is hard- 

 ened to a tough crust, and the meat is raised throughout to the cook- 

 ing-point. Marie Antoinette said that she would rather eat croutins 

 than starve, knowing that these croutins, or meat pie-crusts, were given 

 to the pigs ; that the pigs digested them, and were nourished by them 

 in spite of the wood-sawdust. 



When I come to the other constituents of vegetable food it will be 

 understood that the changes effected in their cookery are but nominal, 

 and that nearly the whole business of vegetable cookery consists in 

 rendering the cellular tissue more digestible than it is in the raw state ; 

 or in breaking it up to liberate its contents. When on the subject of 

 cooking animal food, I had to define the cooking temperature as de- 

 termined by that at which albumen coagulates, and to point out the 

 mischief arising from exceeding that temperature and thus rendering 

 the albumen horny and indigestible. 



