Butter should be bought by the taste and smell. Both fresh and salt butter should smell sweet, and be of an equal colour throughout; if veiny and open, it has been mixed with a staler or an inferior sort. The quality of tub butter is ascertained by putting a knife into the butter; and if, on drawing it out, any rancid or unpleasant smell should attach to the knife, the butter is not good; but, perhaps, the best criterion is to taste the butter near the sides of the tub, for the middle is often sweet when the parts near the sides of the tub are quite rank. Hogs-lard is adulterated with the skimmings of the liquor in which pork or bacon has been boiled. Lard thus adulterated has a grey colour, a soft consistence, and a salt taste; whereas lard, when pure, is white, granular, and rather firm in texture. CHEESE, BACON, AND HAMS. When annatto is dear, or of inferior quality in appearance, it is customary with the venders of the article to adulterate it with vermilion or red lead. This contamination has chiefly been confined to the Gloucester cheese; and may be detected by macerating a small quantity of the suspected article in water impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen, acidulated with muriatic acid; which will immediately cause the cheese to assume a brown or black colour, if the minutest portion of lead be present. I am informed by a respectable dealer, that cheese, especially old Stilton cheese, is frequently _greened_ in particular parts with verdigris, in order to assume the appearance of age. The best cheese is that which is of a dry compact texture, without holes in it; of a whitish colour, and which, on being rubbed between the finger and thumb, almost immediately becomes a soft and somewhat greasy mass. Nor is a moist smooth coat a bad criterion of its quality. It should also be of a moderate age; for neither very decayed, nor decaying cheese, is wholesome; nor is that which is new, adhesive, and ropy, when heated by the fire, of a good kind. Cheshire cheese which crumbles and tastes bitterish has been made of bad milk. Though cheese is generally chosen by the taste, this is by no means a criterion of its nutritive qualities; as the flavour generally depends on the nature of the food which the cows eat, and often on the mode of management in the manufacture of the cheese. In the purchase of bacon and hams, pray bear in mind, friend John, that many more thousands of tons of those articles are sold annually in the metropolis of this land of “_just and equal dealing_” as “fine, new Hampshire bacon and fine Yorkshire hams,” than are received from those counties altogether; and that though the bacon merchants are supplied with bacon from Ireland, none sell _Irish_ bacon. The large Irish hams are also dried and sold for “fine fresh” Yorkshire or Westmoreland varieties, to tickle the fancy of the “Bull Family” for rarities and expensive purchases. MILK AND CREAM.