THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S 
WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
No. 89.] SATURDAY, JUNE IS, 1858. [Pbioe 1 d. 
ROAST PIG. 
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Most of us are well acquainted with 
the origin of cooking, hut lest any of 
our readers are unlearned in the event- 
ful history, we briefly recapitulate. 
“ Ages ago, in China, it was the 
custom to eat uncooked flesh. A pea- 
sant’s cottage caught fire, the furniture 
and everything was burnt, including a 
quadruped inmate, a pig. The peasant’s 
son happened to touch the scorched car- 
case of the pig ; it burnt his fingers, 
which hastily, and with an exclamation 
of pain, he conveyed to his mouth. The 
magical effect, the kindling eye, the re- 
turn to the charge, may all be imagined, 
as also the peasant’s disgust on be- 
holding his son in the act of greedily 
devouring the remains of the pig. The 
father soon, however, discovered, like the 
boy, that roast pig was uncommonly 
nice. The neighbours next interfered ; 
the father and son were taken before the 
chief justice and a jury was impannelled, 
to try the culprits for such a breach of the 
time-honoured customs of China, as the 
eating of flesh in any but an uncooked 
state. Father and son were on the point 
of being ordered out for execution, when 
counsel gravely suggested that a piece 
of the roast pig should be handed round 
to the judge and the jury. Curiosity on 
their parts led them to accede to the 
request, and when the scorched porkling 
had been properly investigated by the 
chief justice and the jury, the two cul- 
prits were acquitted.” 
Now mark what followed. 
“The next day the chief justice’s 
house was burnt down ; the following 
day the house of the foreman of the jury 
was in flames, and in each case a half- 
burnt pig was extracted from the ruins. 
Fires became general throughout the 
city ; not a night but almost every street 
had one or more houses blazing away, 
till at length it was discovered that pigs 
might be roasted without the necessity 
of burning down the houses.” 
This reminds one irresistibly of the 
ants’- nest beetles. Certain beetles love 
that curious mixture of vegetable debris 
found in ants’ nests: it does not appear 
at all a necessity that there be ants 
there, provided there is the proper mix- 
ture of vegetable matter, as all the 
true ants’- nest beetles have been taken 
in old ants’ nests, where there were no 
ants. An ants’ nest is a sort of trap* 
which man, not having thought of imi- 
tating artificially, demolishes every time 
he wishes to find a beetle ! 
A few years ago some moths had 
been found on an empty sugar hogs- 
head, attracted by the saccharine matter 
it contained, and the writers of that 
day used gravely to recommend that 
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