In another dietary, that of a carpenter's family, also in Middletown Conn., 7.6 per cent. of the total food purchased was left in the kitchen and table wastes. The total waste was somewhat worse than this proportion would imply, because it consisted mostly of the protein and fats, which are more costly than the carbohydrates. The waste contained about one-tenth of the total protein and fat and only one-twenty-fifth of the total carbohydrates of the food. At the rate in which the nutrients were actually eaten in this dietary, the protein and fats in the waste would have each supplied one man for a week and the carbohydrates for three days. These cases are probably exceptional; at least it is to be hoped that they are. Among eight dietaries lately studied in Middletown those above named showed the largest proportion of material thrown away. In the rest it was much less. In two cases there was almost none. It is worth noting, however, that the people in these two had the largest incomes of all. In other words the best-to-do families were the least wasteful. This form of bad economy is not confined to the kitchen, but begins in the market.... The common saying that "the average American family wastes as much food as a French family would live upon" is a great exaggeration, but the statistics cited show that there is a great deal of truth in it. Even in some of the most economical families the amount of food wasted, if it could be collected for a month or a year, would prove to be very large, and in many cases the amounts would be little less than enormous.--W.O. Atwater, Charities Review. * * * * * THE COLORS NAMED IN LITERATURE. Mr. Havelock Ellis has made (Contemporary Review, May) an interesting study of the color terms used by imaginative writers, which is a real contribution to scientific æsthetics. The fact that the Greeks did not name green and blue does not, of course, indicate (as Mr. Gladstone and others have alleged) that they could not see the more refrangible rays of the spectrum, but it does show a lack of interest in these colors. Mr. Ellis' statistics are given in the annexed table, the number of times each of the colors is used by the author in selected passages being reduced to percentages.