Crossword-Solution: BIRDSNEST 9 letters, 17 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 12

Just then, Rollo, who was all this time riding on the horse, looked down from his high seat into a little bush by the side of the road, and saw there a little bunch that looked like a birdsnest; and he said, “O, father, please to take me down; I want to look at that birdsnest.” His father knew that he would not hurt the birdsnest; so he took him off of the horse, and put him on the ground.

Travellers have so often spoken of birdsnest soup, canine hams, and grimalkin fricassees, rats, snakes, worms, and other culinary novelties, served up in equally strange ways, that their readers get the idea that these articles form as large a proportion of the food as their description does of the narrative.

The famous birdsnest soup is prepared from the nest of a swallow (_Collocalia esculenta_) found in caves and damp places in some islands of the Indian Archipelago; the bird macerates the material of the nest from seaweed (_Gelidium_ chiefly) in the crop, and constructs it by drawing the food out in fibres, which are attached to the damp stone with the bill.

The biche-de-mer, tripang, or sea-slug, is a marine substance procured from the Polynesian Islands; it is sought after under the same idea of its invigorating qualities, and being cheaper than the birdsnest is a more common dish; when cooked it resembles pork-rind in appearance and taste.

They consider the edible birdsnest as a great stimulant, tonic, and aphrodisiac, but its best quality, perhaps, is its being perfectly harmless.