The art of cookery is no new thing, yet the tastes of mankind are so diverse, that the proverb, 'One man's meat is another man's poison,' becomes a truism. There still exist savages who prefer raw meat to cooked, as did the Fuegians who were lately exhibited in London, but even they had acquired a taste for hard boiled eggs, which they devoured with great relish.

There may also be found in the heart of savage Africa, in Australia, and in some of the South Sea Islands, tribes who prefer human flesh to any other, but these all like their meat, whatever it may be, cooked; and following the custom of the most ancient of men, will sit round a fire broiling their bones, cutting off bits by degrees just scorched, and repeating the process till nothing but the bare bone remains. But even then the feast is not ended, for all the bones are broken, and the marrow, which is highly esteemed, is sucked out as a concluding bonne bouche.

In this mode of cooking and eating, the modern savage closely follows the ancient cave-dwellers, amongst whom marrow seems to have been always esteemed a prime delicacy.

This we know, because many of the bones found in the kitchen middens of these early people are partly charred, and all the marrow-bones are broken. But these troglodytes were not extravagant cooks, nothing was thrown away which might prove useful. Having split the bones and devoured the marrow, they proceeded to make spear and arrow heads from the splinters, for the capture of fresh game to furnish future feasts, and it is more than probable that they crushed and ate the smaller bones, for this is still the custom among savages. Mr. Borcherds, an early South African traveller, describes a feast among some Bushmen to whom a sheep had been given : he says, 'Each bone was separated from the flesh as cleanly as possible, the bones were crushed, and together with the raw kidneys, distributed amongst the children, who seemed to enjoy the delicacy as much as ours do cakes. The meat was laid on the fire, and when half cooked devoured.' Mr. Lumholtz, in his travels 'Among Cannibals' in Australia, describes a feast of snakes, in which the bones were also crushed and eaten; and in that singularly interesting legend, denominated 'The Mountain Chant,' given in the Smithsonian Reports, the hero is represented as killing two rabbits, and pounding them up bones and all with seeds, for food. So that here we have from three parts of the world evidence of the use of crushed bones, and may reasonably infer that the custom was universal, especially in times of scarcity.

Sitting at our well-appointed tables, we smile at the primitive devices adopted by savages, yet some of them have hit upon a mode of cooking which may fairly be termed scientific, so well is it calculated to retain the juices of the meat; as for instance, in Australia, the snakes which furnished the feast described by Lumholtz, were coiled up, tied together, and baked in an oven scooped out of the earth, in which a large fire was made, serving to heat several stones. Some of these were removed, and upon the others a large quantity of green leaves or grass was laid, and upon this the snakes, which were covered with more green leaves and more hot stones, and then the earth was pressed down tight over the whole, no steam being allowed to escape. When done, the meat, tender and juicy, was taken out in the leaves which served as a dish. Mr. Lumholtz extols this method of cooking for salt beef and pork, especially when ginger leaves are used,* but the natives reserve it for snakes and human flesh, cooking other things by throwing them on the hot embers like the Bushmen, and eating them half raw. The New Zealanders cook their potatoes in the same kind of earth-oven, which, probably, in cannibal times also served for the long pig in which they delighted.

The art of baking in ovens is of great antiquity; the ovens of ancient Egypt are frequently represented in contemporary paintings; and the African savage will scoop out the adhesive earth of ants' nests, or the clay of river courses, to form an oven wherein to bake bread, stopping up the opening with wood and clay or cow dung, just as our cottagers used to do with the earth-ovens made at the end of most cottages, at a time when it was the wholesome custom among farm-labourers to make and bake their own bread.

Boiling is another primitive mode of cooking, and the method which is still employed in some uncivilised countries, is to take the hide of the slaughtered animal, tie it up so as to form a bag, place the meat in this bag with some water, and then drop in stones, heated in the fire to a white heat, until the meat is cooked. It must be a very tedious process, and not particularly appetising, but the only one available where pottery and metal are alike unknown. The alternative method of placing the meat on hot stones and covering it with the ashes was doubtless that most generally practised, and is still adopted by hunters and by the gipsies in our own country; one of the dainties of the latter being a hedgehog thus roasted, whilst the hunter in Africa will regale himself with the foot of the elephant, or a porcupine cooked in the same manner. Then of course there is the tripod of sticks, upon which the meat is hung over the flame, and it is doubtful whether meat thus cooked is not of finer flavour than that which we dry up in ovens, or boil to death in ordinary saucepans.

* Years ago it was the custom in some parts of England to take bread rolls wrapped up in cabbage leaves. This imparted a peculiar and, to many palates, agreeable flavour to the bread. In a description of a recent Chinese dinner, we find among the delicacies, a knife fish, rolled in banana leaves, and baked between hot stones.

In very hot countries the sun turns cook, and the hunter has only to place his steak on heated stones exposed to the mid-day sun, and it will soon be sufficiently cooked, or he may cut his game in slices and hang the pieces on a thorn-bush to be thoroughly dried in the sun, and then carry it away with him as biltong in South Africa, or jerked beef (charki) in America.