Many vegetables, too, are excellent when cut very young, which are scarcely eatable when mature. This is especially the case with the bhindi, one of the commonest of the few hot weather Indian vegetables; but your native gardener likes to see them “large and fine,” and will never cut them young enough unless this is insisted upon by his customer. Many vegetables such as pumpkins, onions and tomatoes, may be kept a long time if hung up in an airy place so that they do not come in contact with each other; and where the plan is not practised by those who supply the market, it is well to bear this point in mind, so as to lay by a timely supply against the “rainy day” when vegetables will be scarce. There can be little doubt that the inclusion of a certain amount of uncooked vegetable food in the dietary is always desirable, but salads are too often a dangerous luxury, owing to the very obvious danger from the fertilisers that may have been used in their cultivation, and on this account it is better to avoid them, unless one is absolutely certain as to the conditions under which they are grown; the more as an adequate supply of vegetable acids and salts can usually be taken in the form of fruit. Cucumbers and tomatoes, which can be peeled, need not of course be included in this general law against leaf salads, but tomatoes should always be peeled, as the skin is extremely indigestible, and is a frequent cause of diarrhœa. By dipping it for an instant in boiling water, the skin may be removed with the greatest ease without crushing the tomato. _Fruit._--The remarks that have been made as to the avoidance of raw vegetables that cannot be peeled apply necessarily to fruit, and those in which this is impossible should always be cooked. Provided the fruit be sound--neither over nor under ripe--a certain amount may always be taken by most persons with advantage, but during hot weather, when the digestive organs are feeble and irritable, it is well to avoid fruit such as apples, which are naturally rather hard of digestion, even when in the best condition. For the same reason, the harder portion of a melon near the skin should be avoided, as hard melons, like any other indigestible matter, may cause looseness; but it is a mistake to imagine that they can cause cholera, a superstition which leads many people to deny themselves the indulgence in this very wholesome and delicious fruit. The origin of this fallacy is no doubt to be found in the fact that cholera is usually at its worst during the melon season, but there is no causal connection between these merely coincident facts.