178 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 



''huge gray eagle" shot near Warrensburg, Missouri; 

 another item to a "large American eagle, measuring 17 

 feet from tip to tip," killed near Fairbury, Nebraska. 

 ''It carried a large pig in its talons," adds the report. 

 This last paper should employ an ornithologist, or at 

 least a competent proofreader. 



2.4. In Missouri, verily, 'possum hunts and 'possum 

 suppers are still a matter of annual enthusiasm. On 

 November 12, 1913, an all-night hunt took place not 

 very far from Kansas City. At Excelsior Springs, on 

 Thanksgiving Day, 1910, one of the attendants at the 

 sulpho-saline pavilions was heard to remark: "I am 

 going home with the Doctor for a 'possum supper. ' ' A 

 LaAvrence paper a year or so ago quoted a negro as say- 

 ing 'possums were specially good, and also reported that 

 some one took eight 'possums on one hunt. A discussion 

 in the correspondence column of the Kansas City Star in 

 November, 1913, included an elaborate account of "how 

 they cooked the ' 'possum ' in Virginia. ' ' An issue of the 

 Memphis Commercial Appeal, the same year, published 

 this somewhat iconoclastic version of ' ' 'possum meat : ' ' 

 "The South has long been cursed with stories of things 

 said to exist here or to be peculiarly Southern that are 

 the mere fictions of the exuberant imaginations of profes- 

 sional Southerners south of the line and professional 

 Southerners who have never been farther south than 

 Washington. Nobody now eats possum, and nobody now 

 eats possum and sweet potatoes. Once the negroes ate 

 possum once in their lives, but no negro ever made a 

 second assault on a dish of possum. A man who could 



