increased import during the last thirty-two years is well exhibited in the following extract :-In 1846 the imports of corn and flour amounted to seventeen pounds weight per head of population; in 1855 they had risen to seventy pounds per head; and in 1865 to ninety-three pounds weight per head of population. Finally, in 1877 the imports of corn and flour amounted to 170 pounds weight per head of population of the United Kingdom.' 3

Lastly, those who are interested in the national supply of food must lament that, while Great Britain possesses perhaps the best opportunities in the world for securing a large and cheap supply of fish, she fails to attain it, and procures so little only, that it is to the great majority of the inhabitants an expensive luxury. Fish is a food of great value; nevertheless it ought in this country to be one of the cheapest aliments, since production and growth cost absolutely nothing, only the expenses of catching and of a short transport being incurred.

Having enunciated some general principles which it is important should first be established, I shall offer briefly an illustration or two of the manner in which they may be applied. This brings us to the second division of the subject, viz. the practical treatment of certain aliments in order to render them suitable for food. Dealing first with that of the agricultural labourer, our object is to economise his small pittance, to give him, if possible, a rather more nutritive, wholesome, and agreeable dish-he can have but one-than his means have hitherto furnished. But here there is little scope for change; already said to live chiefly on bread and cheese, with occasionally bacon, two indications only for improvement can be followed, viz., augmentation of nitrogenous matter to meet the wear and tear of the body in daily hard labour, and of fatty matter to furnish heat and force. A fair proportion of meat, one of the best means of fulfilling them, is not within his reach. First, his daily bread ought to contain all the constituents of the wheat, instead of being made of flour from which most of the mineral elements have been removed. But beans and peas are richer in nitrogen than wheat, and equal it in starch, mineral matters, and fat, the last being in very small quantity, while maize has three times their proportion of fat. Hence all of these would be useful additions to his dietary, being cheaper than wheat in the market, although, the retail demand being at present small, they may not be so in the small shops. As an illustration of the value of legumes combined with fat, it may be remembered how well the Erbswurst supported the work of the German armies during the winter of 1870-71, an instructive lesson for us in England at the present moment. It consists of a simple peasoup mixed with a certain proportion of bacon or lard, and dried

3 Statesman's Year Book, 1879, p. 258.

so as to be portable, constituting in very small compass a perfect food, especially suitable for supporting muscular expenditure and exposure to cold. Better than any flesh, certainly any which could be transported with ease, the cost was not more than half that of ordinary meat. It was better also, because the form of the food is one in which it is readily accessible and easily digested; it was relished cold, or could be converted in a few minutes into good soup with boiling water. But for our labourer probably the best of the legumes is the haricot bean, red or white, the dried mature bean of the plant whose pods we eat in the early green state as French beans.' For this purpose they may be treated thus: Soak, say, a quart of the dried haricots in cold water for about twelve hours, after which place them in a saucepan, with two quarts of cold water and a little salt, on the fire; when boiling remove to the corner and simmer slowly until the beans are tender; the time required being about two to three hours. This quantity will fill a large dish, and may be eaten with salt and pepper. It will be greatly improved at small cost by the addition of a bit of butter, or of melted butter with parsley, or if an onion or two have been sliced and stewed with the haricots. A better dish still may be made by putting all or part, after boiling, into a shallow frying-pan, and lightly frying for a few minutes with a little lard and some sliced onions. With a few slices of bacon added, a comparatively luxurious and highly nutritive meal may be made. But there is still in the saucepan, after boiling, a residue of value, which the French peasant's wife, who turns everything to account, utilises in a manner quite incomprehensible to the Englishwoman. The water in which dried haricots have stewed, and also that in which green French beans have been boiled, contain a proportion of nutritious matter. The Frenchwoman always preserves this liquor carefully, cuts and fries some onions, adds these and some thick slices of bread, a little salt and pepper with a potherb or two from the corner of the garden, and thus serves hot an agreeable and useful croûte au pot. It ought to be added that the haricots so largely used by the working classes throughout Europe are not precisely either 'red' or 'white,' but some cheaper local varieties, known as haricots du pays. These, I am assured on good authority, could be supplied here at about twopence a pound, their quality as food being not inferior to other kinds.

But haricots-let them be the fine white Soissons-are good. enough to be welcome at any table. A roast leg or shoulder of mutton should be garnished by a pint boiled as just directed, lying in the gravy of the dish; and some persons think that, with a good supply of the meat gravy, and a little salt and pepper, the haricots are by no means the worst part of the mutton.' Then with a smooth purée of mild onions, which have been previously sliced, fried brown, and stewed, served freely as sauce, our leg of mutton and haricots

become the gigot à la bretonne well known to all lovers of wholesome and savoury cookery. Next, white haricots stewed until soft, made into a rather thick purée, delicately flavoured by adding a small portion of white purée of onions (not browned by frying as in the preceding sauce), produce an admirable garnish for the centre of a dish of small cutlets, or an entrée of fowl, &c. Again, the same haricot purée blended with a veal stock, well flavoured with fresh vegetables, furnishes an admirable and nutritious white soup. The red haricots in like manner with a beef stock make a superlative brown soup, which, with the addition of portions of game, especially of hare, forms, for those who do not despise economy in cuisine where the result attained is excellent, a soup which in texture and in flavour would by many persons not be distinguishable from a common purée of game itself. Stewed haricots also furnish, when cold, an admirable salad, improved by adding slices of tomato, &c., the oil supplying the one element in which the bean is deficient ; and a perfectly nutritious food is produced for those who can digest it —and they are numerous-in this form. The same principle, it may be observed, has, although empirically, produced the well-known dishes of beans and bacon, ham and green peas, boiled pork and pease-pudding, all of them old and popular but scientific combinations. Thus also the French, serving petits pois as a separate dish, add butter freely and a dash of sugar, the former making the compound physiologically complete, the latter agreeably heightening the natural sweetness of the vegetable.

Let me recall, at the close of these few hints about the haricot, the fact that there is no product of the vegetable kingdom so nutritious; holding its own in this respect, as it well can, even against the beef and mutton of the animal kingdom. The haricot ranks just above lentils, which have been so much praised of late, and rightly, the haricot being also to most palates more agreeable. By most stomachs, too, haricots are more easily digested than meat is; and, consuming weight for weight, the eater feels lighter and less oppressed, as a rule, after the leguminous dish; while the comparative cost is very greatly in favour of the latter. I do not of course overlook in the dish of simple haricots the absence of savoury odours proper to well-cooked meat; but nothing is easier than to combine. one part of meat with two parts of haricots, adding vegetables and garden herbs, so as to produce a stew which shall be more nutritious, wholesome, and palatable than a stew of all meat with vegetables, and no haricots. Moreover, the cost of the latter will be more than double that of the former.

I have just adverted to the bread of the labourer, and recommended that it should be made from entire wheat meal; but it should not be so coarsely ground as that commonly sold in London as 'whole meal.' The coarseness of whole meal' is a condition de

signed to exert a specific effect on the digestion for those who need it, and, useful as it is in its place, is not desirable for the average population referred to. It is worth observing, in relation to this coarse meal, that it will not produce light agreeable bread in the form of loaves they usually have either hard flinty crusts, or soft doughlike interiors; but the following treatment, after a trial or two, will be found to produce excellent and most palatable bread. To two pounds of whole meal add half a pound of fine flour and a sufficient quantity of baking powder and salt; when these are well mixed, rub in about two ounces of butter, and make into dough with half milk and water, or with all milk if preferred. Make rapidly into flat cakes like 'teacakes,' and bake in a quick oven, leaving them afterwards to finish thoroughly at a lower temperature. The butter and milk supply fatty matter in which the wheat is somewhat deficient; all the saline and mineral matters of the husk are retained; and thus a more nutritive form of bread cannot be made. Moreover, it retains the natural flavour of the wheat, in place of the insipidity which is characteristic of fine flour, although it is indisputable that bread produced from the latter, especially at Paris and Vienna, is unrivalled for delicacy, texture, and colour. Whole meal may be bought; but mills are now cheaply made for home use, and wheat may be ground to any degree of coarseness desired.

Here illustration by recipe must cease; although it would be an easy task to fill a volume with matter of this kind, illustrating the ample means which exist for diminishing somewhat the present wasteful use of butcher's meats' with positive advantage to the consumer. Many facts in support of this position will appear as we proceed. But another important object in furnishing the foregoing details is to point out how combinations of the nitrogenous, starchy, fatty, and mineral elements may be made, in well-proportioned mixtures, so as to produce what I have termed a 'perfect' dish— perfect, that is, so far as the chief indication is concerned, viz., one which supplies every demand of the body, without containing any one element in undue proportion. For it is obvious that one or two of these elements may exist in injurious excess, especially for delicate stomachs, the varied peculiarities of which, as before insisted on, must sometimes render necessary a modification of all rules. Thus it is easy to make the fatty constituent too large, and thereby derange digestion, a result frequently experienced by persons of sedentary habits, to whom a little pastry, a morsel of foie gras, or a, rich cream is a source of great discomfort, or of a 'bilious attack ;' while the labourer, who requires much fatty fuel for his work, would have no difficulty in consuming a large quantity of such compounds with advantage. Nitrogenous matter also is commonly supplied beyond the eater's wants; and if more is consumed than can be used for the purposes which such aliment subserves, it must be eliminated in

some way from the system. This process of elimination, it suffices to say here, is undoubtedly a prolific cause of disease, such as gout and its allies, as well as other affections of a serious character, which would in all probability exist to a very small extent, were it not the habit of those who, being able to obtain the strong or butcher's meats, eat them daily year after year, in larger quantity than the constitution can assimilate.

Quitting the subject of wheat and the leguminous seeds, it will be interesting to review briefly the combinations of rice, which furnishes so large a portion of the world with a vegetable staple of diet. Remembering that it contains chiefly starch, with nitrogen in small proportion, and almost no fat or mineral elements, and just sufficing perhaps to meet the wants of an inactive population in a tropical climate, the first addition necessary for people beyond this limit will be fat, and, after that, more nitrogen. Hence the first effort to make a dish of rice 'complete' is the addition of butter and a little Parmesan cheese, in the simple risotto, from which, as a starting point, improvement, both for nutritive purposes and for the demands of the palate, may be carried to any extent. Fresh additions are made in the shape of marrow, of morsels of liver, &c., of meat broth with onion and spice, which constitute the mixture, when well prepared, nutritious and highly agreeable. The analogue of this mainly Italian dish is the pilau or pilaff of the orientals, consisting as it does of nearly the same materials, but differently arranged. The curry of poultry and the kedgeree of fish are further varieties which it is unnecessary to describe. Follow the same combination to Spain, where we find a popular national dish, but slightly differing from the foregoing, in the pollo con arroz, which consists of abundance of rice, steeped in a little broth and containing morsels of fowl, bacon, and sausage, with appetising spices, and sufficing for an excellent meal.

Another farinaceous product of world-wide use is the maize or Indian corn. With a fair amount of nitrogen, starch, and mineral elements, it contains also a good proportion of fat, and is made into bread, cakes, and puddings of various kinds. It is complete, but susceptible of improvement by the addition of nitrogen. Hence in the United States, where it is largely used, it is often eaten with beans under the name of 'succotash.' In Italy it is ground into the beautiful yellow flour which is conspicuous in the streets of almost every town; when made into a firm paste by boiling in water, and sprinkled with Parmesan cheese, a nitrogenous aliment, it becomes what is known as polenta, and is largely consumed with some relish in the shape of fried fish, sardines, sausage, little birds, or morsels of fowl or goose, by which of course fresh nitrogen is added. Macaroni has been already alluded to; although rich in nitrogenous and starchy materials, it is deficient in fat. Hence it is boiled and eaten with