boils, and let it boil for about the space of three minutes. If sound, the flour will unite like a good pudding does; if unsound it breaks, curdles, and appears somewhat watery. By observing it while it is warm, some judgement may be formed of its different degrees of unsoundness. The usual test of people in the flour-trade is to knead a small quantity of the article; if good, an adhesive, ductile, and elastic paste is immediately formed, which may be elongated and drawn in every direction, without being entirely separated. The only ready test for the detection of _sharp whites_ and _stuff_ is by the taste. When the farina of potatoes, or, as it is commonly termed, potatoe-starch, is mixed with flour, the fraud may, according to M. Chevalier, a French chemist, be discovered by sprinkling a little of the suspected article on black paper, when through a powerful lens, or microscope, the farina or starch may be discovered by the brilliancy of its particles. To ascertain the presence of insects in flour, examine it in a good light, and if your suspicion be correct, you will observe the whole surface in motion, and on a nicer inspection there will be found in it a great number of little animals of the colour of flour, and of an oblong and a slender form. When they have once taken possession of a parcel of this commodity, it is impossible to drive them out; and they increase so fast, that the only method of preventing the total loss of the whole parcel, is to make it into bread as soon as possible. The only known way of preventing those insects from breeding in flour is to preserve it from damp; to effect which it should be always carefully and thoroughly dried before it is put up, and the barrels, also, should be carefully dried before the flour is stored in them, and placed in a room tolerably warm and dry. FOOTNOTES: [L] The addition of the farina or starch of the potato improves the bread, by counteracting its constipating effects, and by minutely dividing the particles of the flour during the fermentation; and for this reason its introduction into home-made bread would, as the author of “The Oracle of Health and Long Life,” says, be beneficial to health, as making it more nutritious and digestible. SECTION II. _Meat and Fish._ The Butcher has his arts and sophistications. To make meat weigh as heavy as possible he checks the full bleeding of the victim of his knife, and to make it appear plump and white and glistening, particularly joints of veal and lamb, he inflates the cellular membrane, by blowing into it with all his might, the breath respired from his lungs: by means of which practice, should he be infected with any loathsome disease, his customers stand a very good chance of being inoculated with “the blessing.” The distension of the cellular membrane is the sign of meat having received the benefit of this operation.