238 ANIMAL FOOD RESOURCES OF DIFFERENT NATIONS. 



In Costa Rica the large iguanas attain the size of 

 small crocodiles, and form a game which the people of 

 the country highly prize. Although often roasted, a 

 frequent native mode is to boil them, taking out the 

 leaves of fat, which are melted and clarified, and put 

 into a calabash or dish, into which they drop the flesh 

 of the iguana as they eat it. The iguana and white- 

 throated monitor (Monitor albogularis, Daud.) are some- 

 times employed as food at the Cape Colony, but their 

 flesh, though white, is there thought to be dry and 

 insipid. 



The large saurian, Cyclure pectine (confounded with the 

 iguana), is often eaten in warm countries. The flesh is, 

 white, tender, and very savoury ; the tail and the lum- 

 bar regions have a fine flavour like eel, which Mr. Alfred 

 Duges, of Mexico, says he has also tasted in the rattle- 

 snake {Crotalus rhombiferus) and the Pityophis of Deppe, 

 ophidians which attain a sufficient size to be served with 

 white sauce like a fowl. 



It was long before the Spaniards could conquer their 

 repugnance to the iguana, the favourite delicacy of the 

 Indians, but which the former had regarded with disgusti 

 as a species of serpent. They found it, however, to be 

 highly palatable and delicate, and from that time forward, 

 the iguana was held in repute among Spanish epicures. 

 The story is thus related by Peter Martyn: — "These 

 serpentes are lyke unto crocodiles, saving in bygness ; 

 they call them guanas. Unto that day none of owre 

 men durste adventure to taste them, by reason of theyre 

 horrible deformitie and lothsomnes. Yet the Adlantado 

 being entysed by the pleasantnes of the king's sister 

 Anacaona, determined to taste the serpentes. But when 

 he felte the flesh thereof to be so delycate to his tongue, 

 set to amayne without al f eare. The which theyre com- 

 panions perceiving, were not behynde hym in greedy- 

 nesse ; insomuche that they had now none other talke 

 than of the sweetnesse of these serpentes, which they 

 affirm to be of more pleasant taste than eyther our 

 phesantes or partriches." 



