Now this may not be one of the favourite foods in the entirety of Great Britain but it holds a fondness for the Scottish heart. This is "Cullen Skink", and it is a thick soup of smoked finnan haddock, potatoes and onions, though other haddock may be acceptable (to some) and even other fish, within reason.
It is nothing at all to do with our skink, the "Cullen" part being a town right on the Moray coast, and this "Skink" being the local phrase for a knuckle of beef, boiled until it is tender and then the juice used to form part of the same bowl, hence a soup like concoction.
Our skink is quite elderly, and he was issued with Barratt`s Confectionery in 1940. Plain back cards are not always so interesting, but in this case it demonstrates most effectively that the card was a cut out, and that if you pressed the body of the skink out of the perforations to the shape of his body, and folded the card away at the straight perforation along his bottom edge, you could display him almost in three dimensions.
Anyway I must have had sixth sense when I decided not to add the write up for this last night, as I have only just found the set, in our updated British Trade Index, where it is listed as :
NATURAL HISTORY SERIES (A). 68 X 38. Unnd. (64). Plain back. All marked "BCM/HLZ, except eight marked * in HB-62. Four series issued. Anonymous. ... BAR-575
1. Subjects die cut to stand out - matt
2. Subjects die cut to stand out - varnished
3. Subjects not die cut, matt (8 only known, marked *)
4. Subjects not die cut, varnished
I cannot see this set at all in any of the original British Trade Indexes, so do please tell us if you know where they are hiding.
By the way, the eight cards with the asterisks in the Handbook, not having the initials in the picture and also being not die-cut and matt (until I get the list scanned and pasted in) are
- African Rhinoceros
- Bactrian Camel
- Giraffe
- Indian Elephant
- Lion
- Polar Bear
- Red Kangaroo
- Tiger