dine on fritters and pancakes. At other times, seed-cakes, wafers, and
other light confections.

It appears to have been usual for the farmer at that date to allow his
hinds roast meat twice a week, on Sundays and on Thursday nights; but
perhaps this was a generous extreme, as Tusser is unusually liberal in
his ideas.

Tobias Venner, a Somersetshire man, brought out in 1620 his "Via Recta
ad Vitam Longam." He was evidently a very intelligent person, and
affords us the result of his professional experience and personal
observation. He considered two meals a day sufficient for all
ordinary people,--breakfast at eleven and supper at six (as at the
universities); but he thought that children and the aged or infirm
could not be tied by any rule. He condemns "bull's beef" as rank,
unpleasant, and indigestible, and holds it best for the labourer;
which seems to indicate more than anything else the low state of
knowledge in the grazier, when Venner wrote: but there is something
beyond friendly counsel where our author dissuades the poor from
eating partridges, because they are calculated to promote asthma.
"Wherefore," he ingenuously says, "when they shall chance to meet with
a covey of young partridges, they were much better to bestow them upon
such, for whom they are convenient!"

Salmon, turbot, and sturgeon he also reckoned hard of digestion, and
injurious, if taken to excess; nor does he approve of herrings and
sprats; and anchovies he characterises as the meat of drunkards. It is
the first that we have heard of them.

He was not a bad judge of what was palatable, and prescribes as an