d a variety of allied
topics we come here across a catalogue of terms used in speaking of
certain dishes of that day. The reference is to the prevailing methods
of dressing and carving. A deer was said to be broken, a cony unlaced,
a pheasant, partridge, or quail winged, a pigeon or a woodcock
thighed, a plover minced, a mallard unbraced. They spoke of a salmon
or a gurnard as chined, a sole as loined, a haddock as sided, an eel
as trousoned, a pike as splatted, and a trout as gobbeted.

It must, I think, be predicated of Tusser's "Husbandry," of which the
last edition published in the writer's lifetime is that of 1580, that
it seems rather to reproduce precepts which occur elsewhere than to
supply the reader with the fruits of his own direct observation. But
there are certain points in it which are curious and original. He
tells the ploughman that, after confession on Shrove Tuesday, he may
go and thresh the fat hen, and if he is blindfold, kill her, and then
dine on fritters and pancakes. At other times, seed-cakes, wafers, and
other light confections.

It appears to have been usual for the farmer at that date to allow his
hinds roast meat twice a week, on Sundays and on Thursday nights; but
perhaps this was a generous extreme, as Tusser is unusually liberal in
his ideas.

Tobias Venner, a Somersetshire man, brought out in 1620 his "Via Recta
ad Vitam Longam." He was evidently a very intelligent person, and
affords us the result of his professional experience and personal
observation. He considered two meals a day sufficient for all
ordinary people,--breakfast at eleven and supper at six (as at the
universities); but he thought that children and the aged or infirm
could not be tied by any rule. He condemns "bull's beef" as rank,
unpleasant, and indigestible, and holds it best for the labourer;
which seems to indicate more than anything else the low state of
knowledge in the grazier, when Venner wrote: but there is something
beyond friendly counsel where our author dissuades the poor from
eating partridges, because they are calculated to promote asthma.
"Wherefore," he ingenuously says, "when they shall chance to meet with
a covey of young partridges, they were much better to bestow them upon
such, for whom they are convenient!"

Salmon, turbot, and sturgeon he also reckoned hard of digestion, and
injurious, if taken to excess; nor does he approve of herrings and
sprats; and anchovies he characterises as the meat