The fattening process in Italy is one of great refinement in the manner of feeding. It is the fat of the Ortolan which is so delicious; but it has a peculiar habit of feeding which is opposed to the rapid fattening, this is, it feeds only at the rising of the sun. Yet this peculiarity has not proved an insurmountable obstacle to the Italian gourmands. The Ortolans are placed in a dark chamber, perfectly dark, with only one aperture in the wall. The food is scattered over the floor of the chamber. At a certain hour in the morning the keeper of the birds places a lantern in the orifice of the wall; when the dim light thrown from the lantern on the floor of the apartment induces the Ortolans to believe that the sun is about to rise, and they greedily consume the food upon the floor. More food is now scattered over it, and the lantern is withdrawn. The Ortolans, rather surprised at the shortness of the day, think it their duty to fall asleep, as night has spread her sable mantle round them. During sleep, little of the food being expended in the production of force, most of it goes to the formation of muscle and fat. After they have been allowed to repose for one or two hours, in order to complete the digestion of the food taken, their keeper again exhibits the lantern through the aperture. The "rising sun" a second time illumines the apartment, and the birds, awaking from their slumber, apply themselves voraciously to the food on the floor; after having discussed which, they are again enveloped in darkness. Thus the sun is made to shed its rising rays into the chamber floor four or five times every day, and as many nights following. The Ortolans thus treated become like little balls of fat in a few days. This not uninteresting process has been detailed by Dr. Lyon Playfair to the Royal Agricultural Society. It may, probably, be applied to purposes with less luxurious objects than fattening Ortolans. Notwithstanding its delicacy, the Ortolan fattens very fast; and it is this lump of fatness that is its merit, and has sometimes caused it to be preferred to the Becafico. According to Buffon, the Greeks and Romans understood fattening the Ortolan upon millet. But a lively French commentator doubts this statement: he maintains that had the ancients known the Ortolan, they would have deified it, and built altars to it upon Mount Hymettus and the Saniculum; adding, did they not deify the horse of Caligula, which was certainly not worth an Ortolan? and Caligula himself, who was not worth so much as his horse? However, this dispute belongs to the "classics of the table."