272 FISH CULTURE. ' 



two states ; and taking it as a test, the great bulk 

 of our lower classes have little to be proud of. The 

 veriest savage that roams the North or South 

 American wildernesses, the most uncivilized and 

 unknown among the amphibious islanders of the 

 Paciiic, know better what they put into their 

 stomachs and how to prepare it than our poorer 

 countrymen do. It is a question if there is any 

 human being on the face of the globe, barely ex- 

 cepting the Bosjesman of Australia or the Earth- 

 man of the Andes, who is so badly off in cookery 

 knowledge as the English labourer. It may be that 

 excess of civilization has completed our cycle in 

 this respect, and brought us again to the bottom 

 round of the ladder. It appears to me that there 

 is no greater evidence of the decline of character 

 in England than the state of cookery knowledge 

 amongst the lower classes. A knowledge of econo- 

 mical cookery, and the , habitual practice of it by 

 the wives, sisters, and mothers of labouring men, 

 argues domestic duties properly fulfilled — industry, 

 intelligence, and home ties and relationships drawn 

 closer and purified by the conscientious and careful 

 fulfilmlent' of those duties. It is the distinction 

 letween 'the humcm leing and the Irute, for man is 

 the only cooking animal. It makes up, in fact, the 



