e be shopping for a dinner
party, at which two men from out of town are to be initiated into the
delights of the Baltimore cuisine, she may order up the costly and
aristocratic _Malacoclemmys_, the diamond-back terrapin, sacred in
Baltimore as is the Sacred Cod himself in Boston.

The admirable encyclopedia of Messrs. Funk & Wagnall's informs me that
"the diamond-back salt-water terrapin ... is caught in salt marshes
along the coast from New England to Texas, _the finest being those of
the Massachusetts and the northern coasts_." The italics are mine; and
upon the italicized passage I expect the mayor and town council of
Baltimore, or even the Government of the State of Maryland, to proceed
against Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls, whose valuable volumes should forthwith
be placed upon the State's _index expurgatorius_.

Of a marketman I obtained the following lore concerning the tortoise of
the terrapin species:

In the Baltimore markets four kinds of terrapin are sold--not counting
muskrat, which is sometimes disguised with sauce and sherry and served
as a substitute. The cheapest and toughest terrapin is known as the
"slider." Slightly superior to the "slider" is the "fat-back,"
measuring, usually, about nine or ten inches in length, and costing, at
retail, fifty cents to a dollar, according to season and demand.
Somewhat better than the "fat-back," but of about the same size and
cost, is the "golden-stripe" terrapin; but all these are the merest poor
relations of the diamond-back. Some diamond-back terrapin are supplied
for the Baltimore market from North Carolina, but these, my marketman
assured me, are inferior to those of Chesapeake Bay. (Everything in, or
from, North Carolina seems to be inferior, according to the people of
the other Southern States.)

Although there is a closed season for terrapin, the value of the
diamond-back causes him to be relentlessly hunted during the open
season, with the result that, like the delectable lobster, he is
passing. As the foolish lobster-fishermen of northern New England are
killing the goose--or, rather, the crustacean--that lays the golden
eggs, so are the terrapin hunters of the Chesapeake. Two or three
decades ago, lobster and terrapin alike were eaten in the regions of
their abundance as cheap food. One Baltimore lady told me that her
father's slaves, on an Eastern Shore plantation, used to eat terrapin.
Yet behold the cost of the precious diamond-back to-day! In his smalle