Mr. Yarrell, Col. Montague, and their plagiarists, have written pickerwick; thus throwing back the accent, and making a real dactyl of it, but losing all resemblance to the bird's cry, which pick-wérwick retains if accented in the same manner as the English words "precisely," "moreover," "morosely," and such like.

The price of Quails in London may be stated at about 5s. the couple; fewer than three couple can hardly be set upon a table, and these, when trussed for the spit, will perhaps altogether weigh 1lb. At the end of the London season, the purveyors of dinner-parties would give anything for a new dish to stimulate the cloyed appetite and the jaded eye; we strongly recommend them to vary the entrées of Quails with various preparations of Sparrows, or any other of our winged nuisances, before the fruit season and the harvest comes on; they would answer the purpose just as well, and the innovation would be a real benefit to the country.

Quails for the table are kept crowded in small low cages. Mr. Baily, of Mount Street, Grosvenor Square, informs us- "The remarks which I made with regard to the influence of season in fatting the Ortolan, apply equally to the Quail, although belonging to a different genus. I have had very many thousands of them, wild, greedy birds. A timid bird, if looked at, will hide in a corner of its cage, and take no notice of food; not so the Quail: he eats readily the moment food is offered, and thrusts his head boldly between the bars, although strangers are looking on; yet I never saw two fight, [because they had not room to do so; it would have been different had three or four been placed by themselves in a cage inclosing sufficient space for tilting ground.] I have hundreds of times seen them scrambling over

CHAP. X.]

ILLUSIVE DISHES.

393

each other to reach food, but I never saw so much as a peck or a blow given. They are very chilly in a cage, and are liable to blindness. [From this it has been supposed by some, that the French used purposely to put out the eyes of the hens before exporting them.] Their beaks sometimes grow till they become cross-bills, and their plumage becomes very dark. In France they are strict birds of passage; but in Cambridgeshire, in parts of Hampshire, and in Ireland, they remain all the year; there are many in Ireland. We formerly got all our Quails from France, but in that self-called free country they have recently passed game-laws, and among other most preposterous enactments they have forbidden the exportation of Quails; we therefore now get them from Sicily, Holland, and Belgium."

Never mind if we cease to get them at all; let us encourage native productions instead. If we must have such tit-bits, there are plenty of small deer in the shape of Larks, Wheat-ears, &c., on our downs; and even if all these should fail us utterly, let us be thankful to be able to fall back upon roast beef. An English lady, on her first visit to Italy, saw with some surprise a dish of very very little birds produced at a table d'hôte, and inquired what they were; "Madam," replied a hungry Frenchman, with truth, ces sont des illusions!"

The fatting of wild birds largely practised by the ancients. - Good oldfashioned fare.-Mock and true Ortolans.-Not native Britons.-Merits as cage birds. Their song, plumage, and diet.-Variable states of fatness.-Effects of revolutions.-Beau Tibbs and his Ortolan.

THE Quail and the Ortolan are, in England, about the last remaining instances of a practice which has obtained to a much greater extent, in other countries than it ever has in this, and which has been systematically pursued from a very a very remote antiquity. Wild birds have, from the earliest ages, been taken alive by various means, and fatted for the table,

CHAP. XI.]

FATTING BY THE ANCIENTS.

395

according to an established regimen. The creatures subjected to this process form an entirely distinct class from those known as Game Birds, as well as from those that are reared in a domestic state for the sake of their flesh; so that the poulterer's list, in days of yore, was much more rich than it now is. It would comprise three different descriptions of birds; viz., those bred at home, or true poultry; those killed, in their season, in a condition fit for table,—and our ancestors were much more comprehensive in their tastes, in this respect, than we are, for even Bittern might be unmentionable, after a first trial, to palates polite;-and those taken wild, and subsequently fed up in captivity, or "fatted fowl." There is little doubt that the fatted fowl men tioned at 1 Kings iv. 23, were of this last class, and not fat cocks and hens, as is usually supposed; for in the Septuagint, the words thus rendered in our version are, literally, "birds, select fatted ones from the select." The repeated and appropriate allusions in the books of Psalms and Proverbs to the net of the fowler, and the escape of the bird from the snare, will occur to every reader.

Cato, about 200 years before Christ, gives directions* for the fatting of fresh-caught Wood-pigeons on roasted beans, bean-meal, &c. His treatise is sternly brief, or he doubtless would have told us how to bring other birds also into good order; but Varro and Columella, writing at the commencement of the Christian æra, much extend the list. Varro attaches great importance to the fatting (on account of the high price they fetched) of Thrushes, Miliaria (our Ortolans, as likely as not), Quails, Wood-pigeons, and Turtles. In like manner Teal, Pintail Ducks, Mallard, &c., were fat

tened, he tells us, in the "Nessotropheion," or Duckery. Columella gives similar instructions in almost the same words, and mentions besides the sylvestres gallina, Wood-hens, called Rustics (quæ rusticæ appellantur): these, he says, will not breed in servitude, and therefore he gives no more directions about them, except that they be fed to repletion, in order to make them more fit (aptiores) for convivial banquets. What species of bird is meant by them I cannot even guess.

Ruffs and Reeves were, years ago, snared in large numbers on their strutting hillocks, during their season of pugnacity, by men who then fatted them on bread and milk, and made a trade of carrying them to great provincial feasts. But the practice is now obsolete; and, except Quails and Ortolans, "fatted fowl" are pretty nearly obliterated from our bills of fare. Cygnets, however, hopped in August and ponded till November, may be truly, though they are not popularly, referred to the same class.

Fatted fowl belong so completely to good old times, that the few worthy old-fashioned folks whom one meets with now and then-ladies and gentlemen who contrive to abstain from the use of envelopes and railway carriages, so long as a sheet of letter-paper or a postchaise is to be found in archæological warehouses,— they, to be consistent, ought never to be without a supply of these dainties for the third course of their dinners of state. And, at such tables, mediæval dishes would be sure to be assisted by good port and claret, of a respectable antiquity. The eater might safely confide in wine likely to cheer man's heart, not upset his stomach. The revival of an entrée of Ruffs and Reeves, not such as are imported from Holland and to be had for ninepence a-piece in Hungerford Market