SOME FUNNY FOODS.

Western Star, Issue 1385, 31 August 1889, Page 1 (Supplement)

SOME FUNNY FOODS.

"Who would think of eating butterflies—of making a meal from the pretty insects that flit about the garden on a summer's day ? But the black men who live in Australia would laugh at the idea of taking pleasure in a butterfly s beauty, or of carefully preserving it in a glass case. To them the butterfly calls up thoughts of a time of great feasting and laziness, when there is plenty to eat and little to do, for this is tie black Australian's idea of h ppiness. There are some mountains in Australia that are called THE BTJGONG MOUNTAINS, and on them, at certain times, great quantities of butterflies collect. The natives flock from all the country round and light great fires, the smoke of which suffocates the little insects.Then they are gathered and baked on the hot ground on which the fires were. They are sifted to get rid of the down and wings, and the plump little bodies are made into cahes, which are said to have a sweet nutty taste. A certain African king who came to this country was one day, soon after his arrival, invited to a garden partv. His host thought that he would give him something to eat unlike anything that he had ever tasted before, so brought him a strawberry ice. "Isn t that good?" he asked the bl ck man. "Yes, it am berry nice," "vas the reply; "but didi white man ever eat ants ?" The favourite food in his country consisted of

WHITE ANTS POUNDED INTO A JELLY and baked ; and the strawberry ice was so very good that it reminded him of this delicacy. While ants are eaten in some parts of Africa, a curry made of their eggs is a favourite dish in an Asiatic country of Siam, and in Mexico a kind of bread is made of ant's eggs. The ugl7 little Bushmen of South Africa are very fond of roasted spiders, and a Japanese tribe called the Arios live chitfly on a stew made of seaweed, slugs, fish, roots, berries, and mushrooms, with a soup in which a kind of clay, which is very much like putty, is mixed. They were horrified at seems; an English lady who visited them put milk in her tea, and thought it very strange that aay one should like to spoil tea with a liquid that tasted so strong as milk. THE CHINESE are funny people in m my ways, but in none more so than in their fondness for soups made of sharks' fins ani birds' nests. The nests that are used for soups are not at all like those that we know; they are no thicker than a spoon, are about as big as a turkey's egg, and do not weigh more than half an ounce. Thousands of Chinamen make their living by gathering and selling these queer little nests, and the finest sort are very valuable, sometimes fetching two or three times their weight m silver. These same people are also very fond of puppy-dogs fattened and roasted. A leg of dog is as common in their butchers' shop as a leg of mutton is in ours.—From Little Polks Magazine.