“No matter,” persisted Jules; “if you hadn’t already told us, according to that learned Italian—Wait a minute; what was his name?”
“The abbot Spallanzani.”
“Yes, the abbot Spallanzani. If you hadn’t told us about his experiments and the wonderful power of the gizzard, I should never be able to understand how a turkey could manage to digest nuts, shell and all, up to forty and even a hundred a day.”
“Everything is reduced to a sort of soup in the gizzard—shells and kernels; all becomes as soft as butter; and the bird, fat as a pig, finally serves as the chief dish at the Christmas feast.” [[81]]
[1] The quoted passages are from Audubon’s “Ornithological Biography,” [[71]]vol. I, pp. 2–9, and are here reproduced verbatim, though very freely treated by the French author.—Translator. [↑]
CHAPTER X
THE GUINEA-FOWL
“Once upon a time—That begins, you see, like the stories of Cinderella and of the Ass’s Skin. Are we going to spend our time in the recital of the wonders of some fairy godmother? Not at all. I am simply going to tell you the story of the guinea-fowl; and this story happens to be connected, in its first part, with a certain fable told thousands and thousands of years ago, in the evening by the fire-side, to little boys, just as to-day you are told the tragic adventures of Hop o’ my Thumb with the Ogre. I start again then.