Part 16

We have allotted this bird to the epicure, because it is rarely heard of but in association with his luxurious table. Mr. Beckford describes the Ortolans among the delicacies which he saw in the kitchen of the monastery of Batalha as "lumps of celestial fatness."

Ortolan is the French and English names for a species of Fringillidæ (Finches). It is the Hortulanus of Gesner and other naturalists; Miliaria pinguescens of Frisch; Emberiza Hortulana of Linnæus; Ortolano of the Italians generally; Tordino Berluccio of the Venetians; Garton Ammer and Fetammer of the Germans; and Gerste Keneu of the Netherlanders. This wide dispersion on the Continent bespeaks the pet character of the bird. Montagu terms it the Green-headed Bunting.

The French have a fanciful derivation of the name: they say it is from the Italian word for gardener, which is from the Latin hortus, garden; because, according to Menage, in Italy, where the bird is common, it is quite at home in the hedges of gardens.

The male bird has the throat, circle round the eyes, and a narrow band springing from the angle of the bill, yellow; head and neck grey, with a tinge of olive, and small brown spots; feathers black, edged with red; breast, belly, and abdomen, reddish grey, the feathers terminated with ash-colour; tail blackish, two external feathers, in part white; length rather more than six inches. There are, also, varieties marked white, green, blackish, and entirely black. The nest, which is constructed of fibres of plants and leaves, is frequently found on the ground in corn-fields, and sometimes in hedges and bushes.

The Ortolan is not famed for its song, which is, however, soft and sweet. Like the Nightingale, to which it has other points of resemblance, the Ortolan sings after, as well as before sunset. It was this bird that Varro, the lyric poet, called his companion by night and day.

The south of Europe may be considered the summer and autumnal head-quarters of the Ortolan, though it is a summer visitor in the central and northern parts. In Italy it is said to be common by Temminck and others. The Prince of Musignano states it to be found in the Sabine mountains; adding that it rarely flies in the plains of Rome, but is frequent in Tuscany. Lapland, Russia, Denmark. Sweden, and Norway, are among the countries visited by it. In the British Isles it seems only entitled to rank as an autumnal visitor, but it may occur more frequently than is generally supposed; for, especially to an unpractised eye, it might be mistaken for the Yellow Hammer, and in some states of plumage for other Buntings. It has been taken in the neighbourhood of London. In 1837 there was a live specimen in an aviary of the Zoological Society in Regent's-park; and many Ortolans are sent alive to the London market from Prussia. There is, however, some consolation for the rarity of the Ortolan in England. It is approached in delicacy by our Wheatear, which is termed the English Ortolan. Hence it has been pursued as a delicate morsel throughout all its island haunts. Bewick captured it at sea, off the coast of Yorkshire, in May, 1822. Every spring and autumn it may be observed at Gibraltar, on its migration. Mr. Strickland saw it at Smyrna in April. North Africa is its winter residence. Colonel Sykes notes it in his catalogue of the birds of the Deccan.

Ortolans are solitary birds; they fly in pairs, rarely three together, and never in flocks. They are taken in traps from March or April to September, when they are often poor and thin; but if fed with plenty of millet-seed and other grain, they become sheer lumps of fat, and delicious morsels. They are fattened thus in large establishments in the south of Europe; Mr. Gould states this to be effected in Italy, and the south of France, in dark rooms; and the Prince of Musignano, having described the process, adds the relishing words. "Carne exquisita."

The fattening process in Italy is one of great refinement in the manner of feeding. It is the fat of the Ortolan which is so delicious; but it has a peculiar habit of feeding which is opposed to the rapid fattening, this is, it feeds only at the rising of the sun. Yet this peculiarity has not proved an insurmountable obstacle to the Italian gourmands. The Ortolans are placed in a dark chamber, perfectly dark, with only one aperture in the wall. The food is scattered over the floor of the chamber. At a certain hour in the morning the keeper of the birds places a lantern in the orifice of the wall; when the dim light thrown from the lantern on the floor of the apartment induces the Ortolans to believe that the sun is about to rise, and they greedily consume the food upon the floor. More food is now scattered over it, and the lantern is withdrawn.

The Ortolans, rather surprised at the shortness of the day, think it their duty to fall asleep, as night has spread her sable mantle round them. During sleep, little of the food being expended in the production of force, most of it goes to the formation of muscle and fat. After they have been allowed to repose for one or two hours, in order to complete the digestion of the food taken, their keeper again exhibits the lantern through the aperture. The "rising sun" a second time illumines the apartment, and the birds, awaking from their slumber, apply themselves voraciously to the food on the floor; after having discussed which, they are again enveloped in darkness. Thus the sun is made to shed its rising rays into the chamber floor four or five times every day, and as many nights following. The Ortolans thus treated become like little balls of fat in a few days. This not uninteresting process has been detailed by Dr. Lyon Playfair to the Royal Agricultural Society. It may, probably, be applied to purposes with less luxurious objects than fattening Ortolans.

Notwithstanding its delicacy, the Ortolan fattens very fast; and it is this lump of fatness that is its merit, and has sometimes caused it to be preferred to the Becafico. According to Buffon, the Greeks and Romans understood fattening the Ortolan upon millet. But a lively French commentator doubts this statement: he maintains that had the ancients known the Ortolan, they would have deified it, and built altars to it upon Mount Hymettus and the Saniculum; adding, did they not deify the horse of Caligula, which was certainly not worth an Ortolan? and Caligula himself, who was not worth so much as his horse? However, this dispute belongs to the "classics of the table."

The Ortolan is considered sufficiently fat when it is a handful, and is judged by feeling it, and not by appearance. It should not be killed with violence, like other birds; this might crush and bruise the delicate flesh, and spoil the coup-d'oeil, to avoid which it is recommended to plunge the head of the Ortolan into a glass of brandy. The culinary instruction is as follows: having picked the bird of its feathers, singe it with the flame of paper or spirits of wine; cut off the beak and ends of the feet; do not draw it; put it into a paper case soaked in olive oil, and broil it over a slow fire of slack cinders, like that required for a pigeon à la crapaudine; in a few minutes the Ortolan will swim in its own fat, and will be cooked. Some gourmands wrap each bird in a vine-leaf.

A gourmand will take an Ortolan by the legs and craunch it in delicious mouthfuls, so as absolutely to lose none of it. More delicate feeders cut the bird into quarters, and lay aside the gizzard; the rest may be eaten, even to the bones, which are sufficiently tender for the most delicate mouth to masticate without inconvenience.

On the Continent, Ortolans are packed in tin boxes for exportation. They may be bought in London for half-a-crown a-piece. A few poulterers import Ortolans in considerable numbers, and some have acquired the art of fattening these birds. Alexis Soyer put into the hundred guinea dish which he prepared for the royal table at the grand banquet at York, in 1850, five pounds worth of Ortolans, which were obtained from Belgium.

FOOTNOTE:

The Ortolan figures in a curious anecdote of individual epicurism in the last century. A gentleman of Gloucestershire had one son, whom he sent abroad to make the grand tour of the Continent, where he paid more attention to the cookery of nations, and luxurious living, than anything else. Before his return his father died and left him a large fortune. He now looked over his note-book to discover where the most exquisite dishes were to be had, and the best cooks obtained. Every servant in his house was a cook; his butler, footman, coachman, and grooms--all were cooks. He had also three Italian cooks--one from Florence, another from Vienna, and another from Viterbo--for dressing one Florentine dish. He had a messenger constantly on the road between Brittany and London to bring the eggs of a certain kind of plover found in the former country. This prodigal was known to eat a single dinner at the expense of 70l., though there were but two dishes. In nine years he found himself getting poor, and this made him melancholy. When totally ruined, having spent 150,000l., a friend one day gave him a guinea to keep him from starving, and he was found in a garret next day broiling an Ortolan, for which he had paid a portion of the alms.

TALK ABOUT TOUCANS.

The Toucans, a family of climbing-birds of tropical America, appear to have been known in Europe by the length and great size of their bills, long before the birds themselves found their way to England. Belon, in 1555, described the bill of one of the family as half a foot long, large as a child's arm, pointed, and black at the tip, white elsewhere, notched on the edges, hollow within, and so finely delicate as to be transparent and thin as parchment; and its beauty caused it to be kept in the cabinets of the curious. For more than a century after Belon's work, the birds themselves had not been seen in England; for, in the Museum Tradescantianum, the standard collection of the time, and which, from the list of contributors, appears to have been the great receptacle for all curiosities, we read of an "Azacari (or Toucan) of Brazil; has his beak four inches long, almost two thick, like a Turk's sword" (A.D. 1656). From this description Tradescant knew the nature of the bird, if he had not seen it.

Mr. Swainson states, that the enormous bills give to these birds a most singular and uncouth appearance. Their feet are formed like those of the parrot, more for grasping than climbing; and as they live among trees, and proceed by hopping from branch to branch, their grasping feature is particularly adapted for such habits. They live retired in the deep forests, mostly in small companies. Their flight is strait and laborious, but not graceful; while their movements, as they glide rather than hop from branch to branch, are elegant.

Mr. Gould, in his grand Monograph of the Toucans, or Ramphastidæ, remarks, that it was only within a few years of the time of Linnæus that actual specimens of the Toucan had been received in Europe. The beaks, however, of these birds, regarded as curiosities, had occasionally found their way to our shores, and had occasioned some curious conjectures. The earliest shape resembled a Turkish scimitar.

The Toucans (a word derived from their Brazilian name, Taca, Tucà) received from Linnæus the title of Ramphastos, in allusion to the great volume of the beak ([Greek: ramphos]--Ramphos), a family (Ramphastidæ). In some respects, indeed, they resemble the Hornbills in the development of the beak. The Toucans may be said to represent in America the Hornbills in India and Africa. Large as is the beak of the Toucan compared with the size of the body, it is in reality very light. Its outer sheathing is somewhat elastic, very thin, smooth, and semi-transparent; and the interior consists of a maze of delicate cells, throughout which the olfactory nerves are multitudinously distributed. The nostrils are basal, the edges of each mandible are serrated, and the colouring of the whole beak is bright, rich, and often relieved by contrasted markings. But these tints begin to fade after death, and become ultimately dissipated. The eyes are surrounded by a considerable space of naked skin, often very richly tinted. The tongue is very long, slender, horizontally flattened, pointed, and, except at its base, horny; it is fringed or feathered along each side. The wings are short, concave, and comparatively feeble.

The tail is variable, equal and squared; it is remarkable for the facility with which it can be retroverted or turned up, so as to lie upon the back. This peculiarity results from a modification of structure in the caudal vertebræ, which enables the tail to turn with a jerk by the action of certain muscles, as if it were fixed on a hinge put into action by means of a spring. When the retroversion is accomplished, the muscles which caused it become passive, and offer no resistance to their antagonists, which restore the tail to its ordinary direction. When they sleep they puff out their plumage, they retrovert the tail over the back, draw the head between the shoulders; the bill begins to turn over the right shoulder, and becomes at last buried in the plumage of the back; at the same time the pinions of the wings droop, and conceal the feet. The bird now resembles an oval ball of puffed-up feathers, and is well protected against the cold.

Toucans utter, from time to time, harsh, clattering, and discordant cries. "Some," says Mr. Gould, "frequent the humid woods of the temperate regions, while others resort to comparatively colder districts, and dwell at an elevation of from six to ten thousand feet. Those inhabiting the lofty regions are generically different from those residing in the low lands, and are clothed in a more thick and sombre-coloured plumage. All the members of the Hill-Toucans are distinguished by their bills being strong, heavy, and hard, when compared with those of the true Toucans and Araçaris, all of which have their bills of a more delicate structure, and in several species so thin and elastic on the sides as to be compressible between the fingers." Their food in a state of nature consists of fruit, eggs, and nestling birds; to which, in domestication, are added small birds, mice, caterpillars, and raw flesh. They incubate in the hollows of gigantic trees.

Faber was told by Fryer, Alaysa, and other Spaniards who had lived long in America, and also by the Indians, that the Toucan even hews out holes in trees, in which to nidify; and Oviedo adds, that it is from this habit of chipping the trees that the bird is called by the Spaniards Carpintero, and by the Brazilians Tacataca, in imitation, apparently, of the sound it thus makes.

The larger feed upon bananas and other succulent plants; the smaller upon the smaller fruits and berries. Prince Maximilian de Wied states, that in Brazil he found only the remains of fruits in their stomachs, and adds, that they make sad havoc among plantations of fruit-trees. He was informed, however, that they steal and eat birds, but never himself saw them in the act. They abound in the vast forests, and are killed in great number in the cooler season in the year for the purposes of the table. In their manners the Toucans resemble the Crow tribe, and especially the Magpies: like them, they are very troublesome to the birds of prey, particularly to the Owls, which they surround, making a great noise, all the while jerking their tails upwards and downwards. Their feathers, especially from their yellow breasts, are used by the Indians for personal decoration.

Azara states that they attack even the solid nests of the white ants, when the clay of which their nests are formed becomes moistened with the rain; they break them up with their beaks, so as to obtain the young ants and their eggs; and during the breeding season the Toucan feeds upon nothing else; during the rest of the year he subsists upon fruit, insects, and the buds of trees.

Edwards, in his voyage up the Amazon, observes, that when a party of Toucans alight on a tree, one usually acts the part of a sentinel, uttering the loud cry of "Tucano," whence they derive their name; the others disperse over the branches in search of fruit. While feeding they keep up a hoarse chattering, and at intervals unite with the noisy sentry, and scream a concert that may be heard a mile. Having appeased their appetites, they seek the depths of a forest, and there quietly doze away the noon. In early morning a few of them may be seen sitting quietly upon the branches of some dead tree, apparently awaiting the coming sunlight before starting for their feeding-trees.

Some species of Toucans have been seen quarrelling with monkeys over a nest of eggs. Their carnivorous propensity has been strikingly shown in the specimens which have been kept in England. On the approach of any small bird the Toucan becomes highly excited, raises itself up, erects its feathers, and utters a hollow clattering sound, the irides of the eyes expand, and the Toucan is ready to dart on its prey. A Toucan, exhibited in St. Martin's-lane in 1824, seized and devoured a canary-bird. Next day Mr. Broderip tried him with a live goldfinch. The Toucan seized it with the beak, and the poor little victim uttered a short weak cry, for within a second it was dead, killed by the powerful compression of the mandibles. The Toucan now placed the dead bird firmly between its foot and the perch, stripped off the feathers with its bill, and then broke the bones of the wings and legs, by strongly wrenching them, the bird being still secured by the Toucan's foot. He then continued to work with great dexterity till he had reduced the goldfinch to a shapeless mass. This he devoured piece by piece with great gusto, not even leaving the legs or the beak of his prey: to each morsel he applied his tongue as he masticated it, chattering and shivering with delight. He never used his foot, but his bill, for conveying his food to his mouth by the sides of the bill.

Mr. Swainson remarks:--"The apparent disproportion of the bill is one of the innumerable instances of that beautiful adaptation of structure to use which the book of nature everywhere reveals. The food of these birds consists principally of the eggs and young of others, to discover which nature has given them the most exquisite powers of smell." Again, the nests in which the Toucan finds its food are often very deep and dark, and its bill, covered with branches of nerves, enables the bird to feel its way as accurately as the finest and most delicate finger could. From its feeding on eggs found in other birds' nests, it has been called the Egg-sucker. Probably there is no bird which secures her young offspring better from the monkeys, which are very noisome to the young of most birds. For when she perceives the approach of these enemies she so settles herself in her nest as to put her bill out at the hole, and give the monkeys such a welcome therewith that they presently break away, and are glad to escape.