180 ANIMAL FOOD RESOURCES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



is good eating if kept long enough ; at first it is rather 

 hard and tough, but that of the young birds is delicious, 

 and is much prized. 



" The rotge is excellent eating, and is highly prized by 

 every taste. I have heard the eider duck and the long- 

 tailed duck and even the loon denounced by persons 

 whose tastes were really fastidious, but I never heard a 

 word against the little auk (Mergulus alee). Its flesh, and 

 that of sea-fowl generally in the Arctic regions, improves 

 very much by keeping for a few weeks after being shot ; 

 indeed, it is not uncommon to use them after they have 

 been three months hanging to the booms around the 

 ship's quarter." — Sutherland's Journal. 



Captain Mark Law tells us that they feasted largely, 

 in the Arctic regions, on loons (as Brunnock's guillemots 

 are invariably called). In one harbour called Nameless 

 Bay, a companion and himself, in less than two hours, 

 bagged 600, and had they required it many hundreds 

 more could have been obtained in the same space of 

 time. The crew revelled for some time on such delicacies 

 as " loon soup," " stewed loon," " curried loon," and other 

 ingenious methods of cooking those birds. 



The young of the albatross {Biomedia), when first taken ' 

 from the nest, are said to be delicious. 



The flesh of the Lapland duck or crested grebe 

 (Podiceps eristatus) is stated to be tender. That of many 

 of these water-fowls is, however, greasy. The smoked 

 flesh of sea-birds with wild garlic, leeks and rice, forms 

 an article of food with the Japanese. 



Many of the islands in Bass's Straits are inhabited by 

 men who follow the precarious trade of sealers and mutton 

 bird procurers; this bird is a specibs of shearwater or 

 petrel {Puffinus sp.). The immense number of mutton 

 birds annually destroyed may be inferred from the fact 

 that two and a-half tons of feathers formed the export 

 of one season (each bird furnishing only the twentieth 

 part of a pound weight) or 112,000 birds. The birds 

 themselves are salted, dried and smoked for use in the 

 winter, like the dried fish of the poor on the coast of 



