(See Aliment, page 72.) Though in this article we have, perhaps, introduced all the more essential remarks, yet we must still add what fancy, fashion, or refinement, has suggested. It is not generally understood how profuse and prodigal civilized nations are in the expenditure of aliment. A large proportion escapes unchanged, and becomes, with the ex-crementitious fluids, a manure. Many substances, rejected as useless, are employed in the same way. We shall begin with the latter.

Fish, when caught in a proportion beyond that which the inhabitants can consume or preserve, are scarcely objects of the present attention; but the bones, which we reject, after the modern processes of cookery still contain useful aliment. When ground, they yield gelatine to the common processes. The stomach of dogs extract it, so that they discharge almost pure calcareous earth. Later refinements have extracted nutritious particles from bones, by an instrument styled a digester, and, from its inventor, Papin's digester; in which water, in a strong well secured iron vessel, is heated far beyond the boiling point. The fins of fish, some parts of the skin, have been in a similar way dissolved.

Boiling in close vessels has been recommended by some authors, as preventing the evaporation of the finer parts, or what may be styled the aroma of animal food. This is, however, an useless refinement; for this aroma is soluble in water, if not carried off by too great heat. To preserve it, the water should be kept immediately below the boiling point, and the process longer continued. This makes beef, mutton, and chicken tea, superior to the broth of either; and, if we would be still more nice, the meat should be put in a close earthen vessel without any water, and placed in a water bath, at about 200° of Fahrenheit. It is stewed in the steam raised from the food; and the jelly, thus formed, contains the more delicate and nutritious particles of the food, with the flavour unimpaired and unaltered. In this state it is well adapted for delicate stomachs, and for food in febrile cases. When, as in baking, the volatile parts are not closely confined, they are altered by heat, and acquire a kind of empyreuma not agreeable to the taste, nor easy in the stomach. In the common ovens, this compound, empyreuma, is often very offensive.

The great refinement of modern cookery is, however, the minute division of the aliment. In this consists the real secret of the effects of the soup prepared according to count Rumford's plans; which are only the decoctions of the farinacea, with a proportion of animal food, deprived, by the continuance of heat, of all their nourishment, which is communicated to the water. To this various condiments are added; of which the cheapest and most useful is the red herring, more often used in the soups of the luxurious than they are themselves aware. It is an instance of what we remarked in the condiments of the ancients, of the effects of even unpleasant substances in a very minute proportion.