We now proceed to draw attention to the inconvenience of hard water in cooking. It is well known that greens, peas, French beans, and other green vegetables, lose much of their delicate color by being boiled in hard water. They not only become yellow, but assume a shriveled and disagreeable appearance, losing much of their delicacy to the taste. For making tea the evil is still more obvious. It is extremely difficult to obtain a good infusion of tea with hard water, however much may be wasted in the attempt. We endeavor to overcome the difficulty by the addition of soda, but the tea thus made is always inferior. One reason of this is, that it is difficult to adjust the quantity of the soda. Tea contains nearly 16 per cent. of cheese or casein, and this dissolves in water rendered alkaline by soda; and although the nutritious qualities are increased by this solution, the delicacy of the flavor is impaired. The water commonly used in London requires, at the very least, one-fifth more tea to produce an infusion of the same strength as that obtained by soft water. This, calculated on the whole amount of tea consumed in London, resolves itself into a pecuniary consideration of great magnitude. The effect of hard water upon the health of the lower animals is very obvious. Horses, sheep, and pigeons, refuse it whenever they can obtain a supply of soft water. They prefer the muddiest pool of the latter to the most brilliant and sparkling spring of the former. In all of them it produces colic, and sometimes more serious diseases. The coats of horses drinking hard water soon become rough, and stare, and they quickly fall out of condition. It is not, however, known that it exerts similar influences upon the health of man, although analogy would lead us to expect that a beverage unsuited to the lower animals can not be favorable to the human constitution. Persons with tender skins can not wash in hard water, because the insoluble salts left by evaporation produce an intolerable irritation.