Neglected Food On the subject of food, it is not
a little surprising to read in many places ardent discussion" on the edibility of the grey squirrel. I well remember years ago "stopping off" at Albany in order to see that attractive town ; but the one feature that remains at all vividly in my mind is a butcher's shop that was thickly curtained with the bodies of grey squirrels. This was before the species became common in England, and it aroused a certain degree of pity ; but if we are content to see rabbits exposed for sale, and to regard them as good food, there is no reason to exclude the squirrel, which is, or may be, as harmful as the rabbit, and is certainly a more agreeable and wholesome form of food. Our people, especially I think in villages, are singularly conservative in their dietetic philosophy. They will not eat, for example, moorhen, coot (which are a curse on many reservoirs and ponds), hedgehogs (which are detested by game-preservers), champignins or boletus, or the October blackberry ; and the collection of any wild fruit or leaf for stock is a habit falling rapidly into desuetude. Native foods have gone the way of native drinks, such as yarrow or nettle beer and elderberry wine and mead.
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