walking for their pleasure twenty-five miles a day, assist to furnish this
delicacy to the London public at a moderate rate.
Pheasants and partridges mainly come from Norfolk and Suffolk; snipes from
the marshy lowlands of Holland, which also provides our entire supply of
teal, widgeon, and other kinds of wild fowl, with the exception of those
caught in the "decoys" of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. From Ostend
there are annually transmitted to London 600,000 tame rabbits, which are
reared for the purpose on the neighbouring sand dunes. We are indebted to
Ireland for flocks of plovers, and quails are brought from Egypt and the
south of Europe. In most of our poulterers' windows may be seen the long
wooden boxes, with a narrow slit, in which these latter birds are kept
until required for the spit. Not long since upwards of 17,000 came to
London _viâ_ Liverpool, whither they had been brought from the Campagna,
near Rome. Of the 2,000,000 of fowls that every year find a resting-place
_vis-à-vis_ to boiled tongues on our London tables, by far the greatest
quantity are drawn from the counties of Surrey and Sussex, where the
Dorking breed is in favour. Ireland also sends much poultry. No less than
1,400 tons of chickens, geese, and ducks are brought to town annually by
the Great Western Railway, most of which are from the neighbourhood of
Cork and Waterford, whence they are shipped to Bristol. Londoners are
accustomed to see shops of late years which profess to sell "West of
England produce," such as young pork, poultry, butter, and clouted cream.
All these delicacies are brought by the Great Western Railway, and are
principally the contributions of Somersetshire and Devonshire. The bulk of
the geese, ducks, and turkeys, however, come from Norfolk, Cambridge,
Essex, and Suffolk--four fat counties, which do much to supply the London
commissariat, the Eastern Counties Railway alone having brought thence
last year 22,462 tons of fish, flesh, fowl, and good red herrings.
For pigeons we are indebted to "our fair enemy France," as Sir Philip
Sydney calls her, but now we trust our fast friend. They proceed
principally from the interior, and are shipped for our market from
Boulogne and Calais. How many eggs we get from across the Channel we
scarcely like to say. Mr. M'Culloch considers that the capital receives
from 70,000,000 to 75,000,000--a number which we think must be much below
the mark, seeing that the Brighton and South Coast line brings annually
2,600 tons, the produce of Belgium and France. At Bastoign, in the latter
country, there is a farm of 200 acres entirely devoted to the rearing of
poultry and the production of eggs for the supply of London.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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