=Pomaceous Fruits=, as the apple, pear, and quince, are more digestible when cooked; and, speaking generally, all fruit not perfectly ripe should be cooked before eating. The presence of vegetable acids in fruit soon converts the sucrose of cane sugar into dextrose, a less sweet variety of sugar. It is therefore more economical to sweeten after than before cooking. The chief =Berries= are the grape, currant, gooseberry, cranberry, and elderberry. The grape is the most important, and 1,500 varieties of it have been described. Its juice contains a large amount of grape sugar (dextrose), and small quantities of glutinous material, bitartrate of potash, tartrate of lime, malic acid, etc. Besides the above fruits, we have strawberries, mulberries, figs, plantains, melons, etc., which are all refreshing and anti-scorbutic. The orange family furnishes us with the orange, lemon, citron, lime, shaddock, and pomelo, of which the orange is by far the most important, and possesses most valuable refreshing qualities. =Sugar= exists in two chief forms, viz. sucroses and glucoses. =Sucroses=, known chemically as disaccharids (Sucrose = C_12H_22O_11; compare starch = C_12H_20O_10) are exemplified in cane, beet, maple, malt (maltose), and milk sugar (lactose). Cane sugar has been gradually displaced by beet sugar. The two are chemically identical, and equally nutritious. Maltose is given in malt extract as a food, and because of the digestive action of the ferment also contained in the extract on starchy food. Thus:— STARCH. MALTOSE. C_12H_20O_10 + H_2O = C_12H_22O_11. Lactose is comparatively free from sweetness, and is hardly capable of being fermented by yeasts. Of =Glucoses= the best example is dextrose = C_6H_12O_6, H_2O, which can be seen crystallised in dried raisins; it only possesses one-third the sweetening power of sucrose. Starchy food becomes changed into glucose by the action of saliva and pancreatic juice in the alimentary canal. Grapes, cherries, gooseberries, figs, and honey contain lævulose in addition to glucose (glucose = C_6H_12O_6, H_2O, lævulose = C_6H_12O_6). Lævulose resembles dextrose except in being uncrystalline, and in its effect on polarised light. Many ripe fruits, such as pineapples, strawberries, peaches, citrons, contain sucrose and lævulose, the latter being not quite so sweet as sucrose. In the alimentary canal sucroses are inverted into dextrose and lævulose. Thus natural foods containing these sugars are more readily assimilated than those containing sucrose. The sweetening power of the varieties of sugar depends on their degree of solubility in water. Sucrose is soluble in one-third of its weight of cold, and in rather more of hot water. Dextrose is soluble in its own weight of water; lævulose is more soluble, and therefore sweeter than dextrose. Lactose requires five to six parts of cold and two of hot water, and is therefore not so sweet as the other varieties. CHAPTER IV.