deprivation of food: on the contrary, a man may eat heartily to the day of his death, and feel no inconvenience, so far as any protest of the stomach is concerned, yet the verdict of the wise physician would be, "Died of starvation." If the food was unsuitable, and could not be assimilated, this was inevitable. Blood, muscle, nerve--each must have its fitting food; and thus it is easy to see why knowledge is the first condition of healthful living. The moral is: Never rashly experiment in diet till sure what you are about, and, if you can not for yourselves find out the nature of your projected food, call upon some one who can. Where wheat is ground whole, it includes six and a half parts of heat-producers to one of flesh-formers. The amount of starch varies greatly. Two processes of making flour are now in use,--one the old, or St. Louis process; the other, the "new process," giving Haxall flour. In the former, grindstones were used, which often reached so great a degree of heat as to injure the flour; and repeated siftings gave the various grades. In the new, the outer husk is rejected, and a system of knives is used, which chop the grain to powder, and it is claimed do not heat it. The product is more starchy, and for this reason less desirable. We eat far too much heat-producing food, and any thing which gives us the gluten of the grain is more wholesome, and thus "seconds" is really a more nutritious flour than the finer grades. Try for yourselves a small experiment, and you will learn the nature of flour better than in pages of description. Take a little flour; wet it with cold water enough to form a dough. Place it on a sieve, and, while working it with one hand, pour a steady stream of water over it with another. Shortly you will find a grayish, tough, elastic lump before you, while in the pan below, when the water is carefully poured off, will be pure wheat-starch, the water itself containing all the sugar, dextrine or gum, and mineral matter. This toughness and elasticity of gluten is an important quality; for in bread-making, were it not for the gluten, the carbonic-acid gas formed by the action of yeast on dough would all escape. But, though it works its way out vigorously enough to swell up each cell, the gluten binds it fast, and enables us to have a panful of light "sponge," where a few hours before was only a third of a pan. Starch, as you have seen, will not dissolve in the cold water. Dry it, after the water is poured on, and minute grains remain. Look at these grains under a microscope, and each one is cased in a thick skin, which cold water can not dissolve. In boiling water, the skins crack, and the inside swells and becomes gummy. Long boiling is thus an essential for all starchy foods.