FLESH FOOD FEOM MAMMALS. 133 



Porpoise flesh is sold at Bridgetown, Barbados, to the 

 negroes at 3d. to 6d. per poTind, and the flesh of the shark 

 at a penny per pound. 



The porpoise was at one time, even in this country, es- 

 teemed a, voluptuous article o£ food. Malcolm IV. granted 

 to the monastery of Dunfermline, those which were 

 caught in the neighbourhood; and it is said to have 

 been introduced at the tables of the old English nobiUty 

 as late as the time of Queen Elizabeth. Much later than 

 this, it was a great article of consumption in some coun- 

 tries professing the Eoman Catholic faith, especially dur- 

 ing the season of Lent, and accordingly, in spring, it was 

 the peculiar object of pursuit. Sailors on long voyages, 

 in lack of fresh provisions, were often happy to have 

 recourse to it. Thus, Capt. Colnett, in 1793, mentions 

 that, when off the coast of Mexico in the Pacific, they 

 saw porpoises in abundance, and took many of them, 

 which they mixed with their salt pork, and so made 

 excellent sausages : " They became," he adds, " our ordi- 

 nary food." 



Like most of the cetacea, its flesh has a very strong 

 oily flavour, which, however, relished by an Esquimaux, 

 is not very agreeable to the palate of a European epicure 

 of the present day. 



With modem times a change has taken place in the 

 tastes of cultivated society ; but in high northern lati- 

 tudes poi-poises are still, as they have ever been, highly 

 esteemed as articles of food. Thus Egede states that 

 " The flesh is by the Greenlanders reckoned a great 

 dainty; and the oil they find a beverage, than which, 

 according to their taste, nothing can be more delicious."* 



° Naturalists' Library, Mammalia. 



