But besides the flesh-making ingredients, namely, the albumen and fibrin, we have already shown that it is needful the blood should have food for oxygen; this also is contained in milk, grain, pulse, vegetables, and meat. In the meat as fat, which more or less the juices of the meat and even the lean contain, in the pulse, grain, potatoes, as starch, in the vegeta-bles, as sugar of various kinds, and in milk as sugar of milk. At first sight, few things seem less alike than starch and sugar, but modern discovery has proved that our saliva - the natural moisture of the mouth (which in its froth, as it is swallowed with every mouthful of food, always contains air) has power, when mixed with moistened starch at the heat of the stomach, to turn the starch into sugar; and again we find that butter and fat contain the same ingredients as starch and sugar, but with this difference, that ten ounces of fat will feed as much oxygen as twenty-four ounces of starch. Grains, vegetables, milk, and meats differ from each other, and amongst themselves in their quantities of flesh-producing and oxygen-feeding substances; but whether the oxygen feeders be in the form of sugar or fat, we can tell exactly how much starch they amount to, and the following list taken from Baron Leibig's Familiar Letters on Chemistry, in this way shows the relative value of the several kinds of food in flesh-producing, and oxygen-feeding, or warmth-giving ingredients.

Here, then, we have proof of the value of variety in food, and come upon what may be called the philosophy of cookery.*

* "Among all the arts known to man," says Leibig," there is none which enjoys a juster appreciation, and the products of which are more universally admired than that which is concerned in the preparation of our food. Led by an instinct which has almost reached the dignity of conscious knowledge, as the unerring guide, and by the sense of taste which protects the health, the experienced cook, with respect to the choice, the admixture, and the preparation of food, has made

In our food the proportions of human milk are the best we can aimat; it has enough of flesh-producingingredients to restore our daily waste, and enough of warmth-giving to feed the oxygen we breathe. To begin with the earliest making of dishes, we find that cows' milk has less of oxygen-feeding ingredients in a given measure than human milk; a child would, therefore, grow thin upon it unless a little sugar were added; wheat flour has, on the other hand, so much an excess of oxygen-feeding power as would fatten a child unhealthily, and it should therefore have cows' milk added to reduce the fattening power.

The same sort of procedure applies in greater or less degree to all dishes. Veal and hare stand lowest in the list for their oxygen-feeding qualities, and, on this account, should be eaten with potatoes or rice, which stand highest, and with bacon and jelly which furnish in their fat and sugar the carbon wanting in the flesh. With the above table before us, and keeping in mind the facts already detailed, it is clear that cookery should supply us with a mixed diet of animal and vegetable food, and should aim so to mix as to give us for every ounce of the flesh-making ingredients in our food, four ounces of oxygen-feeding ingredients. It is clear, also, that the most nourishing or strength-giving of all foods are fresh red meats, they are flesh ready made, and contain, besides, the iron which gives its red colour to the blood, being short of which the blood lacks vitality, and wanting which it dies.

To preserve in dressing the full nourishment of meats, and their properties of digestiveness, forms a most important acquisitions surpassing all that chemical and physiological science have done in regard to the doctrine or theory of nutrition.

"In soup and meat sauces he imitates the gastric juices, and by the cheese, which closes the banquet, he assists the action of the dissolved epithalmium (fine inner lining), which, with the swallowed saliva, forms rennet of the stomach. The table supplied with dishes, appears to the observer like a machine, the parts of which are harmoniously fitted together, and so arranged, that when brought into action, a maximum of effect may be obtained by means of them. The able culinary artist accompanies the blood, making articles with those which promote the process of solution and re-solution into blood in due proportion; he avoids all kinds of unnecessary stimuli, such as do not act in restoring the equilibrium ; and he provides the due nourishment for the child as well as the old man, as well as for both sexes.

"The intelligent and experienced mother or nurse chooses food for the child with the same attention to the laws of nature ; she gives him chiefly milk and farinaceous food, always adding fruits to the latter; she prefers the flesh of adult animals which are rich in bone earth, to that of young animals, and always accompanies it with garden vegetables; she gives the child especially bones to gnaw, and excludes from its diet veal, fish, and potatoes; to the excitable child of weak digestive powers, she gives, in its farinaceous food, infusion of malt and uses milk sugar, the respiratory matter prepared by nature herself for the respiratory process, in preference to cane sugar; and she allows him the unlimited use of salt." part of the art of cookery; for these ends the object to be kept in mind is to retain as much as possible the juices of the meat, whether roast or boiled. This, in the case of boiling meat is best done by placing it at once in briskly boiling water; the albumen on the surface, and to some depth, is immediately coagulated, and thus forms a kind of covering which neither allows the water to get into the meat, nor the meat juice into the water.

This accomplished, the water should be kept just under boiling until the meat be thoroughly done, which it will be when every part has been heated to about 165 degrees, the temperature at which the colouring matter of the blood coagulates or fixes; at a lower temperature, 133 degrees, the albumen sets, but the blood does not, and therefore the meat looks red. and raw. We have taken this bit of instruction for cooks direct from Leibig. As to roasting, the same rules apply: the meat should first be brought near enough a bright fire to brown the outside, and should then be allowed to roast slowly. In connection with this point of preserving the rich juices of meat, it may be as well to remind all cooks and housekeepers that the brine in which meat, covered with dry salt, is in two or three days found swimming, is caused by the fact that the meat has in it a large quantity of water, that it can hold but about half as much of brine as water, and that the excess of water as it flows out, carries with it, to so large an extent, the juices and nourishing power of the meat, that it is no over estimate to state that one pound in every three is completely thrown away when meat is corned.