REPTILES AS FOOD.

Patea Mail, 14 April 1882, Page 3

REPTILES AS FOOD.

Would you eat a reptile ? (says a writer in an English magazine.) You shudder at the very thought. But what about turtle soup ? This is the only culinary form in which we are familar with the reptile in England ; but on the coast of the Spanish Main, where they are very abundant, and sometimes weigh six or eight hundred pounds apiece, they constitute a standard article of diet with all classes, and turtle-fin, turtlepie, stewed, boiled, curried, and devilled turtle, are found in every house., The choicest Antigua turtle—reputed the best—may be purchased alive at the rate of three halfpence per pound weight —speared ones, which will not live long, for less. In Sail Juan del Norte, on the coast of Nicaragua, I once had nothing but turtle for four days, and grew to be weary of it, long before the time had expired. Sometimes one buys a fat “fish/’ sound and heavy, which defrauds its purchaser by laying fifty or sixty eggs and reducing its weight by at least two-thirds. , These turtle-eggs are separate and about the size of a hen’s, but the shell is soft and membraneous, and they are nearly globular in shape ; the contents, very rich and delicious when boiled or roasted, do not coagulate, by heat. I have tasted alligators’ eggs, too, but there is a nauseous, musky odour and flavour about them, as there is with the flesh of the reptile itself. Iguanas’ eggs are better, .but much smaller. Singular to say, the eggs of the ostrich are not at all bad eating, not coarser or stronger to the palate than an ordinary duck’s egg.