But
Then There Are But Twelve Ounces In The Pound, Which Being
Allowed For, Sixteen Ounces, Come For Something Less Than Twopence
Halfpenny English.
Fish commonly sells for four sols the
twelve ounces, or five for the English pound; and these five are
equivalent to three-pence of our money:
But sometimes we are
obliged to pay five, and even six sols for the Piedmontese pound
of fish. A turkey that would sell for five or six shillings at
the London market, costs me but three at Nice. I can buy a good
capon for thirty sols, or eighteen-pence; and the same price I
pay for a brace of partridges, or a good hare. I can have a
woodcock for twenty-four sols; but the pigeons are dearer than in
London. Rabbits are very rare; and there is scarce a goose to be
seen in the whole county of Nice. Wild-ducks and teal are
sometimes to be had in the winter; and now I am speaking of sea-fowl,
it may not be amiss to tell you what I know of the halcyon,
or king's-fisher. It is a bird, though very rare in this country
about the size of a pigeon; the body brown, and the belly white:
by a wonderful instinct it makes its nest upon the surface of the
sea, and lays its eggs in the month of November, when the
Mediterranean is always calm and smooth as a mill-pond. The
people about here call them martinets, because they begin to
hatch about Martinmass.
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