We think, however, that the candour of Mr. Accum leads him to make too much allowance for this consideration throughout. Surely, though many articles of food be not absolutely poisonous, a diet consisting of drugs and chemical compounds and articles never intended by nature to be eaten or drunk, articles for which, presented simple, the hungriest stomach would feel no appetite or inclination, cannot be wholesome. Brick and mortar are not poison; yet we cannot, like the dragon of Wantley, swallow a church, and pick our teeth with the steeple. Many can eat oysters, but few could manage the oyster-knife. Even the Welshman of King Arthur’s court, fond as he was of toasted cheese, would inevitably have been choked by the mouse that ran down his throat to eat it, had he not “pulled him out by the tail.” We could give farther extracts; but must refer the reader to the work itself, which contains much interesting matter, besides what we have selected. THE MONEY THAT IS OFTEN LAID OUT IN THE PURCHASE OF COOKERY BOOKS, WHICH TEACH THE ART OF EXCITING DISEASE AND PAIN BY DUBIOUS COMBINATIONS AND CULINARY POISONS, MIGHT, WE THINK, BE MUCH BETTER EXPENDED UPON A BOOK LIKE THE PRESENT; EVERY PAGE OF WHICH GIVES WARNING OF SOME DANGER, OF WHICH WE OUGHT ALL TO BE AWARE. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A Treatise on Adulterated Provisions. BY FREDRICK ACCUM. ------- THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT. II. KINGS—CHAP. VI. VERSE XI. (_From Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, No. XXXV. Page 542._) Mr. Accum, it appears, is one of those very good-natured friends, who is quite resolved not to allow us to be cheated and poisoned as our fathers were before us, and our children will be after us, without cackling to us of our danger, and opening our eyes to abysses of fraud and imposition, of the very existence of which we had until now the good fortune to be entirely ignorant. His book is a perfect death’s head, a memento mori, the perusal of any single chapter of which is enough to throw any man into the blue devils for a fortnight. Mr. Accum puts us something in mind of an officious blockhead, who, instead of comforting his dying friend, is continually jogging him on the elbow with such cheering assurances as the following. “I am sorry there is no hope; my dear fellow, you must kick the bucket soon. Your liver is diseased, your lungs gone, your bowels as impenetrable as marble, your legs swelled like door-posts, your face as yellow as a guinea, and the doctor just now assured me you could not live a week.”