Hippophagy seems going up in the world, and we should
not be surprised if there were persons who insist, next Christmas, on having Christmas horse or Christmas pony instead of Christmas beef. A man writes to the Times to say he gave a dinner off a grey pony, aged 18, on which he had ridden six miles on the pre- vious Saturday (he need not have mentioned its colour when alive, or his ride upon it,—it needlessly increases the aversion to horse), and that it was quite equal to beef. Moreover, one of the invited who dined off it, as we may say impartially, and without prepossession in its favour, if also without prejudice against it, gives evidence in favour of this pony-dinner. Indeed, he writes with a vivacity of epicurism which excites his host's censure, for the latter assures the Times that he did not provide the entertainment to gratify epicures with a new flavour, but to save 2,000,000lb* of cheap and excellent horse food which are annually wasted through a senseless prejudice. Still, we are bound to bear witness that the guest did find an exquisite flavour in the grey pony which epicures would appreciate. "Take the flavour of butchers' meat and of game as your two extreme points of comparison,— the flavour of horseflesh will occupy the mean between them,"— a scientifically phrased, but yet, we submit, far from clear defini- tion. What butchers' meat, and what game ? Is the mean to be (veal partridge), or I (mutton + wild-duck), or what ? We confess to having no more distinct idea of the taste of "butchers' meat" than of the smell of "flowers."
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