licity, to enable them to supplant the inferior and sophisticated, if not spurious, articles with which the market is now flooded for the sake of profit.

If we contrast the amount of food deterioration consequent upon ignorance, as compared with that resulting from deliberate dishonesty, there can be but little doubt that want of knowledge is responsible for an incredibly larger proportion of food waste than is due to any villainy of corruption or venality of trade instinct.

Every subject can be divided into as many parts as may be desired; for our present purpose we should wish to save the patience of those interested, and consider, firstly, foods essential, which, to include anything beyond the period of infancy, must comprise water, milk, and breadstuffs. Then, a somewhat discursive selection of the common articles of diet may be found appropriate; after which, a few food accessories, albeit non-essential, are still of too much consequence to be passed over in any general enquiry as to the results produced by the combination of food and food adjuncts commonly taken in the daily diet.

At the present time, scientific opinion is divided as to whether stimulants are to be properly classed as foods or not. In this regard the much larger series of stimulants denominated alcoholic is that alone which is generally alluded to. As yet, the

food value of alcoholic fluids is by no means exhaustively determined, and although we incline to the opinion that the important part played by alcoholic fluids in the process of nutrition must be sooner or later generally admitted, still the food value attributed to the so-called non-alcoholic stimulants, tea, coffee, and cocoa, has been frequently over-rated.

Without attributing to each of these articles the power of injury which the ignorant and excessive use of the first two indubitably entails, if from no other point of view than that a larger attention has been devoted to the subject of cocoa in these chapters, it must be recorded in favour of that article, that no evidence at present exists of its having caused nervous irritability, and deterioration of tissue consequent upon that state, which have followed as certainly upon the misuse of tea as upon that of opium or ardent spirits.

One chapter is devoted to the cookery of food. When it is considered that this is neither a matter of economy alone, nor of the gratification of the palate, but, including these, presents the far higher phase of rendering the majority of food either particularly suitable for digestion and assimilation, or of more or less completely spoiling it in all these respects, the space devoted to it cannot be considered too great.

If nature enables us to obtain crude pabulum which merely necessitates selection, ignorance of the real action of heat upon food, as displayed in the rough-and-ready cookery of ordinary life, must be held responsible for the annihilation of at least a large per-centage both of the nutritive value of food, and of its savour.

CHAPTER I.

WATER.

WATER, although it forms a most important

constituent of all kinds of food, must here

be regarded not as that which is so combined, but such as we obtain from our cisterns and wells, and use either for culinary operations or for more purely drinking purposes.

We are accustomed to note in the newspapers that the water supplied by the great companies is found, upon inspection, to be more or less contaminated, and unfit for consumption.

Some persons suppose that if water were perfectly pure, that is, free from all matters held in solution or suspension, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral, this would be the best adapted for drinking purposes.

Distilled water would fulfil all these requirements, and yet it is almost universally found to be disagreeable, or at least insipid. This arises. from the curious fact that distillation of water by ordinary means leaves an almost inappre

ciable quantity of foreign matter, which is yet sufficient to taint the flavour of the water which has undergone this process. If such precautions be taken as to obviate this almost invariable concomitant, the want of aëration, or the absence of that sparkling quality which is communicated either by carbonic acid gas during the welling up of the purest water from deep chalk springs, or the falling of drops of rain through the air, a certain portion of which is absorbed by them in the passage, they will fully suffice to prove how little desirable the purest waters are for domestic use.

Well aërated rain water has its undoubted value for certain purposes, and at certain periods and conditions of life, particularly with those who are liable to calcic deposits. In this respect it can only be considered valuable for table use in an unmixed form. Externally, for general purposes of ablution, it is certainly advantageous.

For making tea, coffee, and cocoa; brewing, or extracting those soluble matters which perhaps it would accomplish with the greatest economy, it is actually objectionable from its excess of solvent power. The softer waters invariably dissolve out other matters which it is of great importance both in regard to flavour and dietetic excellence to avoid.

Perhaps the finest water obtainable, with which