The one object of the vegetable kingdom is to build up, for the use of the animal or organic realm, the constituents found in the mineral or inorganic kingdom. These mineral constituents are dissolved, sorted out and built up in the right proportions for the use of animals when taken as foods. Whenever these foods are not so eaten they are sent back again to the earth by the aid of microbes during the process of decay, to be again available for plant use. Cooking is a process invented by man which is analogous to that of decay, for it dissolves and disintegrates the structures which Nature has built up. When man eats food that is partially disintegrated he does not obtain from it the right sort of nutriment which Nature intended him to have. To intensify the wrong-doings of the cook, man further hastens the disintegrating process by adding to the things that he cooks a due proportion of a common and very stable mineral, called salt. It is powerful, because it is not easily disintegrated. The salt greatly expedites the process of decay, whether in the natural form of fermentation, or whether by the application of heat, as in cooking. Salt is used in Nature to promote the flow of those electric and magnetic currents which are a manifestation of the universal life-force which pervades all things seen and unseen. It is an essential constituent of the sea because the ocean is the life-blood of the earth. It is an essential constituent of our own blood, because it is needed to make the blood stream a good conductor of magnetic currents. When you put this salt into water and then proceed to boil vegetables in it, it quickly sucks out all the life-force from them, and if persisted in reduces them to the state of minerals from which they were originally constructed. FOOD AND THE SOURCE OF BODILY ENERGY. Dr Rabagliati and Professor Atwater are, I believe, both right, but the former does not always explain himself clearly to the lay mind. The life-force or animal magnetism is the real source of bodily energy, and it manifests itself only when it has something that resists or regulates its flow. It does this just as certain forms of wire, or other materials, which possess indifferent conducting power, resist the flow of electricity through them. Electricity cannot manifest as light in the usual electric lights used in our houses, as heat in the electric culinary appliances or stoves, or even as power in the motors which run our trams and trains, unless it be given the requisite apparatus to bring about the manifestation required. In exactly the same way life cannot manifest itself as consciousness, with its flow of thoughts, emotions and bodily activities, without the food which is daily supplied to the body. It consequently depends considerably upon how we select our daily rations as to how this vital force will manifest within us. H. VALENTINE KNAGGS. HOLIDAY APHORISMS. A Sun Bath needs no Soap. * * * * *