But there was nothing beyond the difficulty of catching it, to prevent the Homeric heroes from making free with game, such as venison, and the flesh of the wild goat;[535] and from a passage in the Iliad, Feith infers, that even birds were not spared.[536] We trust, however, that they feathered and cooked them, and did not devour them _au naturel_, as certain Hindùs do their sheep, wool and all. The Egyptians had a very peculiar taste in ornithophagy, and actually ate some kinds of birds quite raw, as they likewise did several species of fish; and this not in those early ages when Isis and Osiris had not reclaimed the bogs of the Nile, but in times quite modern, when Herodotus travelled in their country, and heard their vain priests lay claim to having civilised Hellas. Both birds and fish, indeed, underwent a certain sort of preparation. Of the latter some were dried in the sun, others preserved in pickle, and the same process was applied to ducks, quails, and many other species of birds, after which they were eaten raw. We recommend the practice to our gourmands, and have no doubt they would find a pickled owl or jackdaw, devoured in the Egyptian style, altogether as wholesome as diseased goose’s liver. It must not, however, be dissembled, that many critics, concerned for the gastronomic reputation of the Egyptians, contend that, by the word which we translate “to pickle,”[537] Herodotus must have meant some kind of cookery; to which Wesseling replies, that, without designing to impugn the taste of those gentlemen, he must yet refuse to accept of their interpretation, since by observing that they roasted or boiled all other species of birds and fish, such as were sacred excepted, the historian evidently intends to say, that these were eaten raw. The learned editor might have added, that Herodotus uses the same term in treating of the process of embalming,[538] and we nowhere learn that the mummies were cooked before they were deposited in the tombs. ----- Footnote 535: Od. ι. 185. κ. 180. Footnote 536: Iliad. ψ. 852, seq. Footnote 537: Προταριχεύειν. Herod. ii. 77, edit. Wessel. Footnote 538: Herod. i. 77, seq. ii. 15. ix. 80. -----