The transition is easy from these delicacies to other less questionable birds, and the manner of preparing them for the pot or spit; and brings Peter Belon to what he evidently likes--a good dinner in a general way. “You may talk,” he says, “of Spaniards, Portuguese, English, Flemings, Italians, Hungarians, or Germans, but none of them, in dinner-giving, come up to the French. The latter begin with meats disguised a thousand ways (mille petits desguisements de chair); and this first entry, as it is called, consists of what is soft and liquid, and ought to be sent in hot, such as soups, fricassees, hashes, and salads”! (Hot salads are a rarity now-a-days). The second course is roast and boiled, of different kinds of meat, as well of birds as of terrestrial animals, “it being well understood that no fish is eaten except on fast-days.” The dinner ends with “cold things, such as fruits, preparations of milk and sweets.” This is the outline of a dinner only; but when Peter Belon enters into a detailed bill of fare, the newspaper report of a Lord Mayor’s dinner pales beside it. A few of the names of these dishes--as well as they can be translated--are worth preserving. What do you think of pilgrim capons--lions--made of the white meat of pullets; wild boar venison with chestnuts; diamond-pointed jelly; goslings dressed with malvoisie; feet (whose feet?) with infernal sauce (pieds à la saulce d’enfer); counterfeit sea-hog; laurelled quails; partridges with capers; veal sausages; hop salad; chestnut butterflies; golden-backed woodcock pasties; ox-heel pasties; plumed peacocks; tipsy cake (gasteaux joyeux); little cabbages all hot (petits chouy tous chaulds); and, amongst other varieties, pomegranate salad?