GOOD APPETITES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 298, 16 October 1873, Page 8

GOOD APPETITES.

In the time of Charles 1., Taylor, the Water Poet, gave an account of one Nicholas Wood, a Kentish man, who had a power of stowing away a marvellous quantity of food at a meal. He was credited with having, on one occasion, devoured a whole raw sheep ; on another, three dozen pigeons,; on a third, several rabbits y on a~ fourth, * eighteen yards of black pudding ; while on two other occasions the quantities set down were sixty pounds of cherries and three pecks of damsons. But it will be better to disbelieve these statements, and attend to the moderate though stiU startling account given by » Taylor, that "Two loynes of mutton } and one loyne of veal were but as three sprats to him. Once, at Sir Warham St. Leger's house he showed himself so violent of teeth and stomach that he ate as much as would have served thirty men, so that his belly was like to turn bankrupt and break, but that the serving-man turned him to the fire and anointed his paunch with grease and butter to make it stretch and hold; and afterwards, beinjj laid in bed, he slept eight hours and fasted all the wbilf, which when the knight uuderstood he commanded him to be laid into the stocks and there to endure as long as he had laid bedrid with eating.'* In the time of George I, there was & man who,in a fit of religious enthusiasm, tried to maiutain a Lenten fast of forty days and forty nights. Breaking down in this resolution after a few days, he took revenge on himself by becoming an enormous eater, devouring large quantities of raw flesh with much avidity. Somewhat over a century ago a Polish soldier, presented to the court of SaxoDjr as a marvel of voracity, one day ate twenty pounds of beef and half a roasted calf. About the same time a youth of seventeen, apprenticed to a Thames waterman, ate five pounds of shoulder of lamb and two quarts of green peas in fifty minutes. An achievement of about equal gluttony was that of a brewer's man, who at an inn in Alders-g*te-street, demolished a roast goose of six pounds weight, a quartern loaf, and three quarts of poiter in an hour and eighteen minutes. Early in the reign of George 111. a watchmaker's apprentice, nineteen years of age, in three->-quarters of an hour, devoured a leg of pork weighing six pounds and a proportionate quantity of peas pudding, washing down these comestibles with a pint of brandy taken ofl in two draughts. A few years afterwards there was a beggar at Gottingen who on more than one occasion ate twelve pounds of meat at a meal. After his death his stomach, which was very large, was found to contain Jiumerous bits of flint and other odds and ends, which nature very properly refnsed to recognise .as food. In fact, setting aside altogether the real or alleged eating up of a whole sheep or hog, the instances are very numerous in which a joint sufficient for a large family has disappeared at a meal within the unworthy corpus of one man. — Dickeris'a . " All the Year Hound."

The following singular announcement appears in the "Eiverine Herald:"—. "Birth: Lackington.— On the 14th inst., at Echuca, the wife of Alfred Lackington of a daughter. Dimensions — 23in. long, 7in. across the breast, 7in. round 'the arm, lOin. round thigh, 12in. from shoulder to shoulder; weight, weight, 121 b.," Another equally as unusual is published in the Daylesford Mercury :—": — " Birth ; Nankervis. — On the 20th inst., at Albert-street, Daylesford (on the anniversary of cheir wedding day, after 16 years of wedded life), the wife of James Nankervis of a son." An. important discovery of fossil re« mains has been made atGowrie Creek. Queensland. They consist says the " Darling Downs Gazette," of the head, fore-leg, and foot bones of an extinct species of gigantic mammalia, named by Professor Owen, in 1844, " Diprotodon Bustralis." Many remains of this animal have been discovered in various parts of the Darling Downs district, and particularly at King's Creek and Gowrie. From these fossils Professor Owen has from time to time been able to proceed with the construction of a, complete skeleton, but for many years past he has been unable to procure the foot bones now brought to light at Gowrie. He is indebted to Mr. G. B, King and a Toowomba gentfenjan, $>$ the Jitter d^scoyery,