ABSTRACT
W HEN a philosophy of fashion is written, we shall learn (unless the philosopher shirks his job and leaves the subject of
food unexplored) why the changes of taste are more marked among the fowl of the air than the fish of the sea. We no longer eat swans or peacocks, though from the time of the Romans till the sixteenth century in England, these birds were the most prized delicacies at every really important banquet. We no longer eat linnets and thrushes, and the art of serving four-andtwenty live blackbirds in a pie so that when the pie was opened the birds began to sing is forgotten so completely that the nursery rhyme that recalls it is taken as pure nonsense, instead of an interesting memory-fiction instead of historical fact. But our forefathers did actually accomplish the joke and regarded it as a fitting dish for a king.
