BOUND THE TABLE

To roast fowls and chickens, an onion and a large piece of salted butter should always be put inside them, unless they are otherwise stuffed ; and it is best always to tie over their breasts a large slice of fat bacon, which should be removed a short time before they are done. Capons, turkeys, and guinea fowls are best larded, and the two first ought to be furnished with an appropriate stuffing ; but all larded poultry should have a piece of buttered paper tied over the larding, to be removed in time to let the larding take colour. Basting with butter is an essential part of the process of roasting poultry, and the fire ought by no means to be so fierce as that for roasting a joint. All white fowls, be they tame or wild, should be roasted slowly. Black poultry, i.e., ducks and geese, re- quire to be quickly roasted, and at a brisk fire. These latter do not require any larding, nor a shoe of bacon to be tied over them ; but, at the first stage of roasting, it is well to tie a piece of buttered paper over the breast. The basting should be done -with butter, and should be almost continuous towards the end of the process ; and this applies also to all kinds of wild ducks. The young domestic duck, which it is the traditional custom in this country to eat with peas, is to my mind an insipid viand. Domestic ducks are onty fit to eat when they are full grown, and then they should be stewed or braised; and in that form the accompauiment of peas is all very well. But as a roast your skinny domestic duckling is not to be compared to a wild duck. This, however, is a matter of custom as much as of taste ; moreover when young ducks are in season, the choice of winged animals for roasts is very -limited. Sti

Pheasants and partridges, the former of which ought

to be classed in our days with domestic poultry, should be treated iu the same manner as fowls. Partridges, however, being a dark -fleshed bird, require to be less done ; but they should always be roasted with a slice of fat bacon tied round them, and the introduction of a couple of bay leaves inside them is said to improve their taste. Pheasants are of course always finely larded and stuffed with truffles by the true gourmand.

Woodcocks, snipes, and plovers, and every other kind of winged game not of the duck tribe, should be enclosed in a slice of bacon while roasting, and should be judi- ciously basted, neither too much nor too little. Trail birds should have one or more slices of buttered toast placed under them, to catch the trail, and great care must be taken not to overdo them under pain of render- ing them uneatable.

It is a bad plan to "spit” any small birds ; they should be tied to the spit, and, if roasted in the contrivance which the French call a rotissoire, they stand a better chance of being artistically roasted. This machine is simply a diminutive meat screen holding a horizontal spit, which is set in motion by clockwork. I do not know whether such an apparatus is to be procured in this country ; but I well remember how, in days gone by, this machine had a bell, which began to toll slowly some time before the works had run down, and gradually increased to a mad peal as the stoppage of the machinery drew nigh. Then there was a kind of arm with a ladle at the end attached to a spit in the rotissoire , which at every revolution of the spit gathered up the gravy, and then discharged it over the bird. Of course this machine would not do to roast large joints nor a bird with toast under it ; but in this latter case the self-acting baster could bo removed.

In roasting venison, the great point to attend to is ta