"There's nothing thrown away in Paris," sed Peter, "excepting human life. The rag-picker with his basket and his crook is one of the most important personages in the city. The stumps of cigars and cigarettes are what form the snuff of the most fastidious men who indulge in the habit--the scraps of old paper are all utilised and every bit of rag is converted to good use--the garbage, consisting of outside leaves of cabbages, turnip tops and even rotten fruit serve as ingredients for soups sold in the inferior restaurants; but the bread perhaps is most remarkable,--private families and boarding houses throw out crusts which are merely stale; cafes have plenty of broken crusts and soiled bits, but although it is cast into the street it is all carefully collected and preserved and the very refuse which is cast into the street from the sumptuously furnished tables of aristocratic salons on the Rue de Rivoli will not unlikely reappear in another form on the same tables and be appreciated. Crusts of stale bread are collected by inferior bakers and are soaked and rebaked and served again as new bread in cheap restaurants, the small broken pieces are carefully collected and cut up into small dice and after undergoing some secret process are converted into those appetizing toasted chips which give such a relish to soup--but there is another class, much more objectionable, at least to our ideas,--the soiled and dirty scraps such as were to be found amongst the rubbish of the rag-picker's basket, are seldom or ever given to poultry or pigs as you would imagine, but undergo a process of cleaning and are then dried, pounded into crumbs and burnt upon greased tins until they become a rich brown, and of this bread dust, every restaurant, from the one where the members of the senate meet, to the one whose customers regard a dish of meat as an exceptional treat, keep a stock; your cutlet is made to look beautiful with it--ham, fowls, or baked meats all owe more or less of their attractiveness to the same source. This is no secret here, and just so long as the dish set before them is pleasing to the eye, and pleasant to the taste, they ask no questions nor trouble themselves to wonder of what it is composed. There is scarcely any part of any animal--ox, horse, dog, cat, sheep, goat, sparrow or frog that is not utilized and made to furnish savoury morsels for one class or other--the better portions of a beast naturally find their way to that portion of the city where money is most plentiful, but I do not think it is too much to say that had the English people the same knowledge that the French possess in culinary matters, that the quantity of meat and vegetable that is daily wasted at home would furnish food, both toothsome and wholesome, enough for every starving creature within its shores.