his honour. He went, and as he was ushered into the hall he remarked an unusual and very unpleasant smell. It was a smell of cooking, too, but of most unsavoury meat. The smell seemed to walk upstairs, though the house was large and the kitchen distant. It came into the drawing-room, and when dinner began it seemed to hover in the soup and fish. A little later and it came upstairs in a body, eddying round the wild goose. It was so bad that by general consent the bird, the occasion of the whole festa, was removed. The explanation came in due course. The keeper had been ordered to send a wild goose. He could not get a grey goose, so he shot and sent a 'solan goose,' alias a gannet, which had never eaten anything but fish in its life, and 'roasted' like a putrid conger-eel.

For some years it has been the fashion among the gamedealers to hang a few uncommon or odd-looking birds in their window, generally spread-eagled' in a way to show off their plumage. Albinos and oddities find a ready sale. Every mass of pheasants which comes to Leadenhall is turned over, and the light-coloured or piebald birds picked out for this purpose. The writer once saw a sulphur-crested cockatoo and a great black woodpecker hanging up for sale at a Leadenhall game stall. The cockatoo was one that had escaped and been shot in a wood, and the woodpecker was found among a mixed lot of game from Norway. The cockatoo was possibly intended to be stuffed, but the woodpecker was christened 'Norway pheasant,' and clearly meant to be eaten.

A bachelor, who was no bad judge of matters of the table, once bought a specimen of every game-bird and wild-fowl on sale in Leadenhall on a certain day, had them cold-stored, and, sending for them when he felt disposed, ate the whole series. He pronounced them all good, but snipe the best.'

Without differing from this opinion, it can hardly be doubted that some of the prices given for minor wild-fowl show a great lack of sense among the game-buying public. From December to February there are always a few redshanks, curlew, moorhens, and water-rails in the shops. The prices asked for these are quite ridiculous if compared with those set on first-class birds of greater size and better flavour. A shilling is asked for a little redshank, the same for a water-rail, and 18. 6d. for a curlew, when splendid pheasants may be bought for 2s. or 28. 3d. No one would claim. that the moorhen's flesh in December is equal in quality to that of a pheasant at the same time, and the quantity is as one to

five. It is the extreme value set on snipe and woodcock (snipe last season never fell lower than 1s. 6d. each), which has reacted on these inferior shore-fowl and water-fowl-inferior, that is to say, to snipe, for a September moorhen or a curlew shot inland in the turnip-fields is excellent eating, though not in the first flight' among birds for the table. If the comparison of price be extended to fish, the disproportion is still more striking. On one day in December, when redshanks weighing about threequarters of a pound were selling for a shilling, that excellent fish the John Dory was to be bought in any quantity for 4d. per lb. in the same shop. It should be noted that very mild weather on the Continent in November and December means very high prices for woodcock in England. During November 1896, when mild weather was general over all the parts of Europe included in the Meteorological Office's chart, they were 48. 6d. apiece, instead of the nominal retail price, high enough at any time, of 38. 6d. Even after the cold days at the end of November there was not a single cock offered for sale in the market on December 3. It is often said that wild-fowl are in better condition and of better flavour during a frost. This depends partly on the duration of the frost, partly, too, on the kind of wild-fowl. In long periods of hard weather, like that in January 1894, even the wild-duck grow thin, poor and rank; and plover, snipe, and woodcock, though shipped in thousands from Ireland, were not worth eating. Plover, whether green plover or golden plover, deteriorate after three days' hard weather. They are soft-billed birds, and as soon as the ploughed lands on which they feed are frozen they fly in a body to the salt marshes, and soon get a strong flavour of seasnails and sandhoppers. Numbers are shot and sent to market, but they are never so well worth eating as in a mild November. If there is only a 'cold snap' of a week or ten days, every other kind of wild-fowl does improve in condition. Even rabbits are then better worth eating, and wild-duck, with appetite increased by frost, are fatter than at any other time.

If any further testimony were wanting to the high value set on birds as luxuries for the table, it may be found in the eclipse suffered by venison. What is known as the 'private trade' in venison has almost ceased. What was once considered the most 'distinguished' game which could be set before guests is now relegated to hotels and clubs, and only appears in perfection at the feasts of City companies. This is a capital error in gastronomy, in which the sentimental side-let us call it association-plays

a not inconsiderable part. But as facts rather than theory are the objects of the present paper, it is enough to draw attention to the fact that venison has disappeared from the menu at dinner parties, that red-deer venison is scarce, buck venison neglected, and a saddle of roe never seen.

The two kinds which reach London, red deer and fallow, are in season at different times, and probably need some difference of treatment in preparing for the table. The season for red-deer venison opens in the beginning of July, is at its best in August and the first fortnight of September, and closes, or ought to close, when the stags begin roaring at the end of that month. Fallow bucks come into season in June, when the does are giving birth to their fawns; but the winter fallow venison is the fattest and best, bucks and does being both in season. Most of the red-deer venison which finds its way to London is Scotch-wild venison, shot in the forests. There is great difference in quality in this Highland venison. To be good, venison needs to be fat; and unlike most game the 'artificially fed' deer, or rather the deer that enjoys the feed of a good English park, is better for the table than when picking up a hard living on a Scotch mountain. But there are varieties of Scotch deer; those on forests with plenty of low ground attached grow fat and heavy, and the meat is as good as that of an English park-fed stag. The only thoroughly bad British red-deer venison is that of stags shot too late in the season, when they are 'roaring.' At the end of October and beginning of November the flesh deteriorates rapidly, and is rank and poor, evidence, if any were needed, that the shooting ought to have closed earlier. But a good deal of Russian venison, shipped ready and cut up into joints, is very poor stuff. The same rules as to season govern the supply of red-deer venison from English parks, but the weight and quality of the latter are superior to the Scotch. Most large proprietors find a sale for their spare venison near home, and consequently it is less common in the market. Red-deer hinds are again in season in winter. But the fallow venison is in every way better. Some is even stall fed, and the carcases show almost as much fat as does small mutton. The future of the game supply may in some measure be foreseen. Pheasants, the mainstay of the trade, will continue to increase, and the price will be lower than ever. As men of business realise fortunes and buy or rent country houses, they rear pheasants; and, in spite of what pessimists predict, the number of rich Englishmen will continue to increase.

In Scotland the pheasant is beginning to spread over all lowground shooting. This year the great increase north of the Tweed was the subject of a special article. When the price of pheasants' eggs-the great initial expense of breeders-drops from 108. to 58. per dozen, as it must before long, in consequence of competition, the number reared will probably be raised by thirty or forty per cent.

Home-bred partridges are probably a fixed quantity, unless the introduction of Hungarian stock makes a difference. On some estates where they have been introduced, the stock has doubled. But the amount of good partridge soil is limited, and they cannot be increased on bad ground. English hares suffer from the Ground Game Act; so do rabbits; but Russian and German partridges, German and Norwegian hares, and the socalled ptarmigan will probably increase. The rabbit supply is now reinforced by hundreds of thousands of frozen rabbits from Australia, and the price of home-bred rabbits has fallen in consequence. In spite of the murderous destruction of sub-arctic game the regions from which it comes are so huge, and the facilities for catching it, for freezing it, and transporting it by sledge, so great, that we may expect the supply to be larger each year rather than less. It seems incredible, but it is true, that Russian game can be brought from St. Petersburg to Leadenhall Market at a cheaper rate per ton than Surrey fowls can be brought from Horsham to London. The Trans-Siberian railway will tap another enormous game area, and the supply from the two extremes-the tame pheasantries of England and the uninhabited forests of the sub-arctic continent-will continue to stock our market. But there is no corresponding increase in the quantity of wild-fowl at present available. Their wariness and nocturnal habits make it always difficult to kill them, the decoys have mainly disappeared, and so far no great source of supply has been discovered abroad. It is matter for surprise that the price of wild-duck is as low as it is at present; and unless the great continental nobles, such as the Duke of Sermoneta, owner of the great duck swamps in the Pontine Marshes, or the proprietors of South Russian or Hungarian lakes, amuse themselves by constructing decoys, the number of wild-fowl available for the use of London will probably fall below the quantity normally consumed.

C. J. CORNISH.

1 Frozen pheasants and other game are regularly brought into the market of Pekin,

FAMOUS TRIALS.

THE KING AGAINST BURKE AND MCDOUGAL.

PREVIOUSLY to Warburton's Act, passed in 1832, the progress of surgery was greatly hampered by the obstacles placed in the way of the study of anatomy. Bodies from the gallows formed the only recognised legal supply of subjects for dissection, and Draconian as our law was, the gaol deliveries were utterly insufficient to keep pace with the demands of the medical schools. Voluntary enthusiasts like Bentham were rare; the very poorest classes shrank from surrendering the bodies of their relatives to the scalpel, and the hideous custom of ransacking the graves and disinterring the newly buried dead was resorted to by gangs of ruffians. On such agents as these surgeons and lecturers had to depend, prices ruled high, and few questions were asked. Wherever there was a school of medicine the need arose, and more especially in Edinburgh, where criminals were fewer and anatomical students more numerous than in the southern capital.

On the morning of Friday, October 31st, 1828, there came into a grocer's shop in the Westport a little, undersized, middle-aged woman to beg a meal. She had come, she said, from Glasgow to join her son, but he had left their lodging in the Pleasance, and she did not know how to gain tidings of him, and was without a friend in the city. Her story, as she poured it out to the shopboy behind the counter, attracted the attention of a customer, William Burke, and he asked her name. She was a widow, and though her husband was a Campbell, she herself came from Inishowen, in Donegal, and her maiden name had been Docherty. Burke was Irish too, and his mother, by a strange coincidence, was a Docherty, so in the fulness of his heart he offered to give breakfast to the poor woman, and he completed his purchase and went away with her. His home was near at hand, in that picturesque but squalid Old Town of Edinburgh which to-day leaves much to be desired in respect of sanitation and the decencies of life, but was then almost indescribable with its filth and overcrowding, and was packed full of the most destitute and abandoned characters.

Burke's 'house' consisted of a single room in an old tene