In selecting _Fish_, take those that are firm and thick, having stiff fins and bright scales, the gills bright red, and the eyes full and prominent. When fish are long out of water, they grow soft, the fins bend easily, the scales are dim, the gills grow dark, and the eyes sink and shrink away. Be sure and have them dressed immediately; sprinkle them with salt, and use them, if possible, the same day. In warm weather, put them in ice, or corning, for the next day. Shell-fish can be decided upon only by the smell. Lobsters are not good unless alive, or else boiled before offered for sale. They are black when alive, and red when boiled. When to be boiled, they are to be put alive into boiling water, which is the quickest and least cruel way to end their life. THE CARE OF MEATS. In hot weather, if there is no refrigerator, then wipe meat dry, sprinkle on a little salt and pepper, and hang in the cellar. Or, still better, wrap it, thus prepared, in a dry cloth, and cover it with charcoal or with wood-ashes. Mutton, wrapped in a cloth wet with vinegar, and laid on the ground of a _dry_ cellar, keeps well and improves in tenderness. Hang meat a day or two after it is killed before corning it. In winter, meat is kept finely if well packed in snow, without salting; but some say it lessens the sweetness. Frozen meat must be thawed in cold water, and not cooked till entirely thawed. Beef and mutton are improved by keeping as long as they remain sweet. If meat begins to taint, wash it, and rub it with powdered charcoal, which often removes the taint. Sometimes rubbing with salt will cure it. Soda water is good also. Take all the kernels out that you will find in the round and thick end of the flank of beef, and in the fat, and fill the holes with salt. This will preserve it longer. Salt your meat, in summer, as soon as you receive it. A pound and a half of salt rubbed into twenty-five pounds of beef, will corn it so as to last several days in ordinary warm weather; or put it in strong brine. In most books of recipes there are several different ones for corning, for curing pork hams, and for other uses, while an inexperienced person is at a loss to know which is best. The recipes here given are decided to be _the best_, after an examination of quite a variety, by the writer, who has resided where they were used; and she knows that the very best results are secured by these directions. These also are pronounced the best by business men of large experience. =To Salt down Beef to keep the Year round.=—One hundred pounds of beef; four quarts of rock-salt, pounded fine; four ounces of saltpetre, pounded fine; four pounds of brown sugar. Mix well. Put a layer of meat on the bottom of the barrel, with a thin layer of this mixture under it. Pack the meat in layers, and between each put equal proportions of this mixture, allowing a little more to the top layers. Then pour in brine till the barrel is full.