who hope to cure affections of the respiratory organs by a draught of fresh blood, but who would inspire a Hindoo with a cannibal terror more intense than that produced in the Algerian settlements by the above Kabyle. Herodotus relates that the Scythians executed their criminals by a potion of fresh ox-blood, and recommends this as a more humane method than capital punishment by the sword, though inferior to the hemlock-cup. "For opening the gates of Tartarus," says Haller, "there is nothing like a good narcotic. If I should have occasion to leave this world, I would no more think of shooting myself than of leaving town by being fired from a mortar, when I could take the stage-coach."
The Turks shudder at seeing a Frank swallow oysters, and even in the cities of Europe and North America we find individuals with similar antipathies; and I know an old professor who passed half a century in St. Petersburg, and suffered grievously from an unconquerable aversion to caviare. Caviare is the salted or pickled roe of the sturgeon—not quite so bad as Schnepfendreck, a North German delicacy, which consists chiefly of the fæces of the common woodcock.
Professor H, Letheby, food-analyst for the city of London, is responsible for the following account of a mandarin's dinner, given to an English party and some distinguished natives of Hong-Kong:
The dinner began with hot wine, made from rice, and sweet biscuits of buckwheat. Then followed the first course of custards, preserved rice, fruits, salted earthworms, smoked fish and ham, Japan leather (?) and pigeons' eggs, having the shells softened by vinegar; all of which was cold. After this came sharks' fins, birds' nests, deer-sinews, and other dishes of an appetizing and dainty character. They were succeeded by more solid foods, as rice and curry, chopped bear's paws, mutton and beef cut into small cubes and floating in gravy; pork in various forms, the flesh of puppies and cats boiled in buffalo's milk; shantung or white cabbage and sweet potatoes; fowls split open, flattened and grilled, their livers floating in hot oil, and cooked eggs of various descriptions, containing embryo birds. But the surprise of the entertainment was yet to come. On the removal of some of the flower-vases a large covered dish was placed in the center of the table, and at a signal the cover was removed. The hospitable board immediately swarmed with juvenile crabs, who made their exodus from the vessel with surprising agility, for the crablets had been thrown into vinegar before the guests sat down, and this made them sprightly in their movements; but, fast as they ran, they were quickly seized by the nearest guests, who thrust them into their mouths and crushed them without ceremony, swallowing the strange gelatinous morsel with evident gusto. After this soy was handed round, which is a liquor made from a Japan bean, and is intended to revive the jaded palate. Various kinds of shell and fresh fish followed, succeeded by several thin broths. The banquet was concluded by the costly bird's-nest soup, the dessert being a variety of scorched seeds and nuts, with sundry hot wines and tea.
But the mandarin was astonished in his turn by finding ice-cream among the delicacies of an English refreshment-table, and predicted disastrous consequences from its habitual use. Ice, without doubt, is in-
