“A very small consumption is made of the old wild boar; the flesh is hard, dry, and heavy; the head only is good. The young wild boar is a fine and delicate game, also, when a year old. The ancients submitted those they could take away from their mother to castration, and left them afterwards to run about the woods, where these animals became larger than the others, and acquired a savour and flavour which made them preferable to the pigs we rear.”--SONNINI. THE HARE. Plutarch contends that the Jews abstained from eating the hare, not because they thought it unclean, but because it resembled the ass, which they revered.[XIX-86] This is only a pleasantry on the part of the celebrated writer, with no other foundation than the fabulous tale of the grammarian Apion, who asserts in his book against the Jews that they preserved in Jerusalem an ass’s head, which they adored.[XIX-87] We know that a sanitary motive was the cause of this animal being interdicted to the Israelites;[XIX-88] and it has been also remarked that the ancient Britons abstained from it.[XIX-89] This mammifer, everywhere very common, swarmed in the East, if we are to believe Xenophon, who saw a great number of them when marching with his troops to join young Cyrus.[XIX-90] Greece was abundantly stocked with them:[XIX-91] the inhabitants of islands of the Ægean sea had more than once to deplore the ravages which hunger caused these timid animals to commit, and whose fecundity they cursed. Hegesander relates that, under the reign of Antigonus, an inhabitant of the island of Anaphe brought two hares into the neighbourhood. Their posterity became so numerous that the people were obliged to implore the gods to preserve the harvest, and to annihilate their formidable enemies. As the immortals turned a deaf ear to these complaints, recourse was had to Apollo alone, and the Pythonissa deigned to return this oracle: “Train hunting dogs, and they will exterminate the hares.”[XIX-92] The advice was good, and deemed worthy of being adopted. The Greeks esteemed highly the flesh of this quadruped, which was served roasted, but almost bleeding,[XIX-93] or made into delicious pies,[XIX-94] much in vogue in the time of Aristophanes.[XIX-95] Hippocrates had, however, forbidden the use of it. “The hare,” said he, “thickens the blood, and causes cruel wakefulness;”[XIX-96] but epicurism will always think lightly of Hygeian precepts which do not accord with its own ideas. At all events, Galen was not of the same opinion as his colleague,[XIX-97] and Galen must be right.