The curiosities of food

by P. L. Simmonds

‘Immediately within the islands, the waters shoal, and make a bank called the Vibora by the Spaniards. It runs to the Cascabel rock, 90 odd miles westward, bristled with reefs and sunken rocks, having a depth of from 7 to 17 fathoms. Easterly winds, that is, the trade winds, veering southward and northward, for determinate portions of the year, roll constant billows over it. Westerly breezes, varying northerly and southerly, bring tremendous gales and heavy swells. The rough agency of all these movements has heaped up the sands, and the corals, and shells, cementing them into rock, and giving the island an elevation of from 15 to 20 feet.

‘The vegetation on these islands is stunted surianas, among whose tough and twisted branches the birds find nestling places. To these lonely islets resort thousands and tens of thousands of sea-fowl. As soon as visitors land, myriads of birds are upon the wing in all directions. Some flocks rise in circling flight high up into the air, and descending again in the same dense numbers as they rose, settle in more remote places; others break away hurriedly, and fly in a wide sweep far around, but return again hastily to the rocks they had quitted, reconciled to bear with the disturbance. The turmoil and hubbub of the thousands of birds thus suddenly put upon the wing, overpower for a moment the roar of the breakers, and darken the air like the sudden passing of a cloud.

‘The constant inhabitants of the rocks are several species of the booby, gannets, terns, gulls, and petrels—and the frigate pelican. The frigate-birds preserve their predilection for rapine amid the teeming plenty of the waters, and subsist by pillaging the gulls and gannets. The migratory visitors are ducks, herons, plovers, snipes, sandpipers, curlews, and ibises, with the several falcons that follow them. In the autumnal movement of these birds towards the equatorial regions, they would be found steering from north to south, but at the time when the egg gatherers visit the islets, they are seen coming from the south, just resting and departing north. The successive months of March, April, and May, are those of the egg harvest.

‘The Keys are open to all adventurers, but the egg gathering is regulated by a custom which recognises the first coming vessel as commanding for the season. The second vessel in seniority is called the Commodore, the first being styled the Admiral. They have a code of laws, to which, in a spirit of honourable compliance, all are expected to show obedience; and in case of any infraction of the obligations thus voluntarily imposed upon themselves, a jury selected from the several vessels tries complaints, and with due formality inflicts punishment for offences.

‘The south-west is the principal of the Pedro Keys. The stay of the birds that resort there to breed is prolonged by the successive loss of the eggs they lay. Each loss is a stimulus to a fresh act of pairing; a new lot of eggs being the result, possibly in number equal to the former lot, but probably less, as the latter deposits are a forced production, at the expense of the vigour of the bird, without any additional strength to the constitution by the increased nourishment of food, the process by which domesticated birds, in changing their habits, are led to lay a continuance of eggs for a long season. The egg gatherers are careful observers of the progress of incubation, and take only the eggs they know to be fresh laid. These are a part of the regulations they require to be observed, or the constant depredations committed on the birds would fatally thin their numbers.

‘Without going into the discussion of naturalists, who see in the different colours of eggs a certain relation to circumstances favourable to concealment, it may be observed that the blotched egg, laid by the Hydrochelidon fuliginosa, properly distinguished as the egg-bird, is found among sticks and dried leaves of the suriana, whilst the white eggs of the boobies and petrels are deposited in hollows of the coral rocks, amid sand and chalky dung. There is one curious coincidence between the eggs of the noddy, Sterna stolida, and the peculiarities of the nest, that must not, however, be unremarked. The elaborate pile of sticks slightly hollowed, in which they deposit their eggs, is always embellished with broken sea shells, speckled and spotted like the eggs. Audubon records the same occurrence in the nests of the noddy terns he inspected in the Florida Keys. The obvious suggestion for this curious prevalence of instinct is deceptiveness, arising from similarity between the egg shell and the sea shell. The nests are pillaged by what is called the laughing gull (the Larus atricilla, not the ridibundus); the numerous empty shells lying among the rocks being always set down to the predatory visits of the laughing gull.

‘South-west Key, and the other sandy islets around it, are beside, annually resorted to by the fishermen in the turtling season for a different harvest of eggs. The turtles (Chelone midas) visit these shoals to deposit their eggs in the dry sand, and leave them to the fostering influence of the sun. They repeat their layings thrice, at the interval of two or three weeks, laying a hundred at a time. Some experience is necessary to trace the place of deposit, for the eggs are always laid in the night; but few of them escape the detection of the turtler.’

Geese are reared in large numbers in Alsace, the livers of which are used in making the famous Strasburg pies. In Denmark, geese and ducks are salted down for winter use.

In Greenland, the snow goose affords great subsistence to the natives, and the feathers are an article of commerce. Each family will kill thousands in a season; these, after being plucked and gutted, are flung in heaps into holes dug for that purpose, and are covered only with earth. The mould presses, and forms over them an arch; and whenever the family have occasion to open one of these magazines, they find their provisions perfectly sweet and good.

In Captain Sir John Ross’s Arctic Voyage to Regent Inlet, it is recorded, that when they discovered that the wild geese had begun to lay on the margin of the lakes, their eggs formed a dainty and wholesome repast. ‘The eggs on being weighed were found on an average to be 4½ ounces—of a dingy white, faintly speckled. The discovery of a goose’s nest, where the process of incubation had not begun, was regarded by them in the light of a treasure. To the natives, however, it appeared to be a matter of very trifling import whether the egg were freshly laid, or whether it were within a few days of being hatched. Half-a-dozen eggs beaten up with the young ones, in all stages of their growth, from the first development of the form to the complete formation of the fœtus, proved to the natives what a dish of callipash and callipee is to the gourmandizing alderman; nor were they very particular as to the embryos being wholly divested of the shells, for the latter appeared to be nearly of the same use as beans to the food of a horse, to force him to masticate the oats more thoroughly.’