32 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



"sovereign of savoriness" — a starved one, it has been said, 

 " being infinitely better than a fatted animal of any other 

 species." Some among us, who fancy themselves good livers, 

 have lately discovered that the snapping species of our swamps 

 and mud holes, though not quite equal to the green turtle and 

 the terrapin, is yet a rich delicacy. 



The wealthy Chinese indulge immoderately in refinements of 

 cookery and the pleasures of the table — their most esteemed 

 delicacies arc shark's fins, bird's nest soups, little running crabs 

 that they have to chase over the table, cold relishes of salted 

 earth-worms, moths and grubs, and a variety of soups, seasoned 

 with filthy compounds of a strojig and villanous smell. Dogs, 

 cats and rats, are also with them in high esteem as food. But 

 we must bear in mind that Kane and his men found rats a 

 most agreeable and dearly prized luxury, and we have other 

 high American authority for eating dog. 



Blood was forbidden to the Jews, and special pains required 

 to abstract it from the meat. " Roast beef, very rare, and blood 

 gravy," is a frequent order for dinner at our hotels. Hog's 

 blood is a principal ingredient in certain foreign sausages, 

 called, sometimes, black puddings, and imported as a luxury 

 into this country. Garton, a highly prized Roman delicacy, 

 was a pickle of fishes' l)lood and gills. The remotest parts of 

 the then known world were visited, and air, earth and ocean 

 ransacked to furnish the complicated delicacies of a Roman 

 supper. A large part of those delicacies would be repulsive to 

 us — yet an old law forbade them to eat poultry. Some people 

 have refused the duck and goose, to feed on birds of prey. 

 Sugar, generally tempting to children, is refused by the young 

 Esquimaux with disgust, but he will gorge himself on whale, 

 blubber and train oil. The Zetlanders and some other fish- 

 eating tribes, will not eat their fish when fresh, but keep them 

 till, what others would consider a most intolerable stench, they, 

 a most agreeable odor, proclaims them to be sufficiently tender 

 and jmtrid. Assafoetida is a highly esteemed condiment among 

 some nations of the East, food highly impregnated with it being 

 regarded as fit for the gods. Our government has just intro- 

 duced this plant into this country, not however, it is to be 

 hoped, with any view of bringing it into general use as a season- 

 ing. Roast elephant, — probably not often a barbecue, — and 



