provide efficient workers to bring the mighty forces of chemical, physical, and biological science to bear directly on such matters as selection of foods, methods of cooking, better apparatus for cleaning purposes, and an evolution of house-planning and furnishing that shall reduce the present elaboration of service and cleaning. It is not possible that every woman who cooks a potato shall be intimately acquainted with the structure of starch-cells or the effect of heat on those cells, nor is it likely that we shall aim at a system that makes the cooking of our food as exact as a laboratory experiment, but that thermometer, microscope, and test-tube have their own part to play is evident. The use of a disinfectant by a nurse is a scientific operation, the scope of which has only been made possible by many and careful investigations in which the specialised effort of the few has resulted in a definite formula and a handy preparation only to be used with intelligent appreciation of its purpose. She understands its use and abuse, how to adapt it to circumstances, and probably how to find a substitute for it if occasion requires. It is much on these lines that many of the problems of kitchen and household interest must be attacked. We need a simple and reliable classification of foods that shall be useful to the practical cook. A quantitative analysis of proteid or carbo-hydrate qualities of wheat, lentils, or milk may form excellent exercise for laboratory classes, but even there it is too often taught without any relation to the assimilative properties of the average digestion and their consequent effect on food values. For ordinary use we want all this brought to a general outlook of the value, and comparative value, of such ordinary food as bread, oatmeal, eggs, and beef; not only as to suitable proportions in our diet and to methods of cooking, but also as a help in providing suitable substitutes for a particular commodity in time of scarcity. Beyond the inevitable victims of the Irish potato famine, many suffered quite unnecessarily for want of ability to replace the familiar potato by a possible substitute; and to-day we are little more intelligent in our catering. Quantity and quality of the potato crop must each year to some extent make itself felt on small purses, and while not dependent on this one article of diet we might often help a meagre table by a good substitute such as rice, hominy, dumplings, and an increased supply of fresh vegetables. Substitutes for butcher's meat too often suggest the purely vegetarian dish that to most people is but a _pis aller_. To replace part or even most of the meat in a dish with a food of approximate dietetic value would generally be more acceptable. A dish of haricot beans cooked with a little minced beef is, for example, a very different dish from the vegetarian treatment of the same article. Pea-soup made with the addition of a ham or beef bone will generally win approval over its less