The Sun.
London, England, 1863-01-01 00:00:00

WHAT IS UNWHOLESOME GAME ?

At the Public Office, Birmingham, on Monday,
a singular case came on for hearing before jMr. T.
Lloyd. Mr. T. Glassey, game dealer, was sum-
moned by Sanitary Inspector Cooper for having ex-
posed for sale five hares which were unfit for human
food. Mr. John Smith appeared for the defendant.
Inspector Cooper stated that he seized the hares in
question, as they smelt abominably; the flesh was
dark-coloured, and they were perfectly unfit for
food. In cross-examination by Mr. Smith, Cooper
said he did not think the smell could be covered by
any cooking, nor that the hares could have been
eaten ; they were nearly rotten. Glassey brought
another hare out of the same lot, but that was not
so bad, although it stank and was very much dis-
coloured. He did not think the one he brought
would have been eatable in a few days. Dr. Hill,
borough analyst, said he examined the five hares,
and they were quite unfit for human food. They
were condemned by Mr. Lloyd. In his (Dr. Hill's)
opinion, they were in almost the last stage of de•
composition. Cross-examined----He thought all meat
that had undergone any process of decomposition
was unwholesome and poisonous. Knew game
was eaten " high," and by some people liked. He
did not think fire destroyed the poison of decom-
position, nor hid the taste of it. At this point Mr.
Smith called Mr. Hatton, of Broad-street, a profes-
sional cook, who produced a saucepan boiling hot,
filled with jugged hare, and requested Dr. Hill to
taste whether it was good. Dr. Hill did so, and
replied, "It appears to me to be very good, but
rather highly spiced. I should not object to eat it
myself." Mr. Smith—The hare is one out of the
lot you condemned, and the one Cooper said would
not keep, and it is now fourteen days since it was
examined. Dr. Hill—The smell may be disguised,
and in that case I think is just as unwholesome.
Mr, Smith—Do you mean to tell the public that if
game and venison is hung so that they smell, it is
not fit for food ? Dr. Hill—l am prepared to stand
by my opinion, and I declare all stages of decompo-
sition render game as much unfit for food as any
other unwholesome food. Mr. Gem (magistrates'
clerk)—Fresh pork and veal to some systems are
almost poisonous, are they not ? Dr. Hill—Cer-
tainly. Mr. Gem—Then, of course, they would in
like manner be unfit for food ? Dr. Hill—l do not
go to that extent, but if constitutions could be
known where pork and veal disagreed, I should
always advise against its being eaten. Mr. Gem—
Of course you would ; but you will never make me
believe that hung game is unwholesome. Why, I
know men of eighty and upwards who would not
touch a hare unless it was regularly " green" be-
fore cooking. Those men want a good deal of
poisoning. (The soup and jugged hare were tasted
by numbers in court, and ail pronounced it good,
and some of the witnesses afterwards adjourned to
lunch upon it.) Mr. Smith then addressed the
bench, characterising the interference of Cooper as
meddling and unnecessary in cases of game, and that
Dr. Hill's notion of poisonous and unwholesome food
was very much like that of several professors of
chemistry, who broadly stated everything was
more or less poisonous, and that to such an ex-
tent did they carry their quantitive and qualitative
imaginations, that the simplest thing in the world
would be pronounced to contain poison and inju-
rious. Yet we lived and got fat upon such things.
Common sense and experience, he urged, should
ever override the dogmas of scientific theorists, Mr.
Smith then called Mr. Stephen Potter, game dealer,
Dale End, who said game is not fit to eat until it
has been hung. Hares will smell horribly after
two or three days, and yet they are sought after.
Customers will not have fresh game ; we cannot
sell it. Plenty of medical men come to me for hares
that are perfectly green.—Mr. George Benson, Mr.
Button, and others corroborated Mr. Potter.—Mr.
Hatton then said—l cooked the hare produced in
the ordinary way, and have not attempted to dis-
guise the smell. It stunk before cooking as bad as
any I ever cooked, but it is now quite fresh and
firm. A hare is not good to cook until it smells, it
has no flavour in it.—Professor W. Sands Cox
(Queen's College) who happened to be in court, was
called, and said—l have heard Dr. Hill's evidence
as to hung game being unwholesome and unfit for
food. My opinion is, that a hure is not good to eat
till it does smell. Fire destroys the smell. I think
hung game wholesome.—Dr, Hill—As a younger
man than Mr. Cox, may I be permitted to say that
measly pork, eaten by children, has produced tape-
worm after it has been cooked.—Mr. Cox—l doubt
it; and am not bound to believe all that's written.
—Mr. Lloyd, in giving his decision, said—As I was
the magistrate who ordered the hares to be de-
stroyed, I cannot stultify myself by dismissing the
case, but I shall not fine the defendant.

PROSE AND VERSE.—In prose, the character of
the vehicle for the composer's thoughts is not deter-
mined beforehand; every composer has to make his own
vehicle ; and who has ever done this more admirably than
the great prose writers of France—Pascal, Bossuet, Fene-
lon, Voltaire? But in Terse the composer has (with com-
paratively narrow liberty of modification) to accept his
vehicle ready made ; it is therefore of vital importance to
him that he should find at his disposal a vehicle adequate
to convey the highest matters of poetry. We may even
get a decisive test of the poetical power of a language and
nation by ascertaining how far the principal poetical
vehicle which they have employed, how far (in plainer
words) the established national metre for high poetry is
adequate or inadequate. It seems to me that the established
metre of this kind in France—the Alexandrine--is inade-
quate; that as a vehicle for high poetry it is greatly infe-
rior to the hexameter or to the iambics of Greece (for ex-
ample), or to the blank verse of England. Therefore the
man of genius who uses it is at a disadvantage as compared
with the man of genius who has for conveying his thoughts a
more adequate vehicle, metrical or not. Racine is at a dis-
advantage as compared with Sophocles or Shakspeare, and
he is likewise at a disadvantage as compared with Bossuet.
The same may be said of our own poets of the eighteenth
century, a century which gave them as the main vehicle
for their high poetry a metre inadequate (as much as the
French Alexandrine, and nearly in the same way) for this
poetry, the ten-syllable couplet.—Fraser's Magazine.
Tile Swedish Chambers have just adopted a bill
presented by the Government to authorise marriages
between Christians and Jews, The passing of this measure,
which has caused a certain impression in Sweden, is
generally considered as a first step towards civil marriages,
of which a member of the Upper Chamber has just, by a
special motion, demanded the introduction into the consti-
tution.

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