20 GLIMPSES OF NATURE. 



further on the same (dietetic) lines. Why not enlarge 

 and extend the British bill of fare ? Here is a topic 

 for my friend Mr. James Payn. The oyster must 

 have been " a great departure " in its time. Imagine 

 the attitude of the solid and eminently respectable 

 Britisher who first swallowed an oyster. It was, in 

 truth, a great feat ; it led to a great innovation in 

 food delicacies, and I trust it may be repeated in the 

 case of many of the products of marine zoology as 

 yet limited to the aquarium. The late Mr. Gosse 

 used to relate how once upon a time he cooked and 

 ate a sea-anemone. 



In the days of my youth, fired with a strong 

 emulation to imitate my masters in science, I went 

 and did likewise. The experiment was not a success. 

 The anemone (fig. 7) was tough, and required a nice 

 sauce hollandaise, say, to make one fancy it was only 

 cod-fish after all. Unfortunately I had to cook the 

 animal myself (the head of the kitchen in those days 

 refused to " mess about," as she put it, with " such 

 filthy things "), and there were no directions in any 

 of the estimable manuals of the culinary art at my 

 command whereby I might be guided in my attempts 

 in food-reform. 



Later on I may " return to my anemone ; '' but it 

 will be rather in a literary than in a culinary sense, I 

 fear. You get nice fresh cuttlefish on the Mediter- 

 ranean borders, and it tastes like nicely-done tripe. 

 Everybody has had (or thinks he has enjoyed) frogs' 

 hind-legs in Paris; but "you can never be sure," as 

 the comic song has it, unless you go to the Halles 

 Centrales and buy your frogs nicely skewered on 

 those little bits of wood, each looking for all the 

 world like a monkey on a stick. Anyhow, I always 



