MICE ON TOAST.
Another Buckland, I fear. I wonder if they are related?
Cooked a viper for luncheon', surgeon and naturalist Frank Buckland gleefully recorded in his diary. He also added that he had prepared some elephant's trunk soup but was disappointed because, despite several days boiling, it was too tough to eat.
Author of the best selling Curiosities of Natural History, he had an ever inquisitive palate and an incredible strong stomach, he would sample and eat almost anything.
His home at Regency House, near Euston Station in London, was more of a managerie than a home, with monkeys, a pet mongoose, rats, and a jackass that would let out a wild laugh every half hour.
On hearing that a panther had died at London Zoo he begged the curator to dig it up so that he could try panther chops which, he confessed,"were not very good."
If I may add a London titbit:
In 1349, Edward III suggested to his London subjects that their 'skill of shooting' was being neglected and proclaimed that 'every one of the said city, strong in body, at leisure times on holidays, use in their recreation bows and arrows, or pellets, or bolts, and learn and exercise the art of shooting ... that they do not, after any manner, apply themselves to ... handball, football, bandyball, cambuck or cockfighting,nor suchlike vain plays which have no profit in them.'
