class of persons. The sense of taste is in its character and range lower than the sense of sight and hearing. The cultivation of the taste for savouries seems to blunt the taste for fruits and the delicate foods. The grass and herbs on which the herbivora subsist, seems to our imagination of little flavour and monotonous; but they eat with every sign of enjoyment, deliberately munching their food as though to get its full flavour. In all probability they find a considerable range of flavours in the great varieties of grasses commonly found together in a pasture. Our elaborate cooking customs entail a vast amount of labour. They necessitate the cost, trouble and dirt from having fires in great excess of that required for warmth: the extra time in preparing, mixing and attending to food which has to be cooked: and the large number of greasy and soiled utensils which have to be cleaned. Cooked savoury food is generally much nicer eaten hot, and this necessitates fires and attention just previous to the meal. We have already said that soft cooked food discourages mastication and leads to defective teeth. Our elaborate cookery is mainly due to our custom of eating so largely of flesh, whilst the eating of flesh would receive a great impetus on the discovery of the art of cooking. Flesh can only be eaten with relish and with safety when cooked. Such a large proportion of it is infected with parasites, or is otherwise diseased, that it would he dangerous to eat it raw, even were it palatable in such a state. In those countries where man eats flesh in a raw or semi-cooked form, parasitic diseases are common. There is not the least doubt that our habit of eating so much cooked food is responsible for much over-eating, hasty eating, dyspepsia and illness. In regard to the making of bread, porridge, and many other comparatively simple prepared foods, the advantages of cooking seem overwhelmingly great. With our present imperfect knowledge and conflicting opinions, it is impossible to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion, and the whole question requires careful and impartial investigation. Experiments have been made with animals, chiefly pigs, with cooked and uncooked clover, hay, corn, meal, etc. (U.S. Department of Agriculture). It was found that the food was more or less diminished in digestibility by cooking. At least 13 separate series of experiments with pigs in different part of the country have been reported. In 10 of these trials there has been a positive loss from cooking the food. The amount of food required to produce in the animal a pound gain in weight was larger when the food had been cooked than when it was given raw. In some cases, the increased quantity of food required after cooking was considerable.