Notwithstanding Don Quixote thought that it augured bad luck to meet with a hare on entering a village, let not a bold traveller be scared, but forthwith stew the omen; a hare, as in the time of Martial, is considered by Spaniards to be the glory of edible quadrupeds, and to this day no old stager ever takes a rabbit when he can get a hare, _á perro viejo echale liebre y no conejo_. In default however of catching one, rabbits may always be bagged. Spain abounds with them to such a degree, that ancient naturalists thought the animal indigenous, and went so far as to derive the name Spain from _Sephan_, the rabbit, which the Phœnicians found here for the first time. Be that as it may, the long-eared timid creature appears on the early Iberian coins, as it will long do on her wide wastes and tables. By the bye, a ready-stewed rabbit or hare is to be eschewed as suspicious in a _venta_: at the same time, if the consumer does not find out that it is a cat, there is no great harm done--ignorance is bliss; let him not know it, he is not robbed at all. It is a pity to dispel his gastronomic delusion, as it is the knowledge of the cheat that kills, and not the cat. Pol! me occidistis, amici. The cook therefore should ascertain beforehand what are the bonâ fide ingredients of every dish that he sets before his lord. [Sidenote: THE OLLA PODRIDA.] In going into the kitchens of the Peninsula, precedence must on every account be given to the _olla_: this word means at once a species of prepared food, and the earthenware utensil in which it is dressed, just as our term _dish_ is applicable to the platter and to what is served on it. Into this _olla_ it may be affirmed that the whole culinary genius of Spain is condensed, as the mighty Jinn was into a gallipot, according to the Arabian Night tales. The lively and gastronomic French, who are decidedly the leaders of European civilization in the kitchen, deride the barbarous practices of the Gotho-Iberians, as being darker than Erebus and more ascetic than æsthetic; to credit their authors, a Peninsular breakfast consists of a teaspoonful of chocolate, a dinner, of a knob of garlic soaked in water, and a supper, of a paper cigarette; and according to their _parfait cuisinier_, the _olla_ is made of two cigars boiled in three gallons of water--but this is a calumny, a mere invention devised by the enemy.