278 WILD-FOWL AND SEA-FOWL OF GREAT BRITAIN 



that although as a roast certain web-footed fowl are 

 not to be desired, yet when turned into soup they 

 are delicious. 



I have in my time tasted jumble soup made from 

 fur, feather, and fin. It was composed of a rabbit, 

 one partridge, the latter having hung just long 

 enough — a very little more suspension would have 

 been too much — four thrushes, three blackbirds, and 

 last, but by no means least, half-a-dozen good perch 

 skinned and cut up with the others. The season- 

 ing and a few trifles were, if memory serves aright, 

 borrowed, so too was the iron pot the soup was 

 made in, and also the firing. The dinner service 

 consisted of two wooden jam spoons and a rusty 

 iron one cleaned up for the occasion, with a couple 

 of pint pots and a basin chipped round the edge. 



How carefully was that soup skimmed and kept 

 just on the simmer by one who had fed many a 

 wood fire before, with a stick here and a stick 

 there, until, long before the concoction was ready, one 

 of the party observed that it smelt "right down 

 moorish." 



Shall I ever forget that meal, and how, when it 

 was over, we, as the old Irish song has it — 



" Swore to a man, that not Judy Phelan 

 Ever made such a potful of soup " ? 



What a pleasure it is when one is no longer young 

 to think over such experiences ! I have wandered 

 a little from the subject of the Scaup, but at one 

 time of my life fishing and fowling were inseparable. 



