The most nearly ideal diet consists of very little meat and a comparatively rich allowance of vegetables and fruit. The food should be chosen with regard to individual appetite and should be varied frequently. Thorough mastication always increases the efficiency of a diet. Thus the food will be most perfectly mixed with saliva and broken into fragments which can be readily attacked by the digestive juices of the stomach and the intestines. CRAVINGS.--There is a well-known tradition that women who are pregnant are subject to longings for one article of diet or another, and that unless the desire be promptly gratified the child will be "marked." In the light of what has already been said regarding maternal impressions, this evidently is nonsense. A prospective mother, like anyone else, does frequently desire one article of food more than another. So long as the object of her wish is not obviously harmful, it should be granted; but if it is not granted no harm will come to the child. Remarkable instances in which disgusting substances have been craved and eaten are often talked about and have even found their way into popular novels. The unfortunate victims of these unnatural cravings are not of sound mind. With reference to them a physician of unusually broad experience wrote fifty years ago, "I have never met with any example of this sort; which leads me to infer that these longings are more frequent in books than in the practice of our art." This conclusion is even more fully justified to-day than when originally expressed.