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.

Those who live on uncooked food contend that a smaller quantity of nourishment is required.  As uncooked food requires more mastication and is eaten more slowly, there is a better flow of saliva and time is given for the digestive organs to be gradually brought into complete action, and finally for the appeasing of the appetite.  In the case of the members of the fruitarian family, whose food was uncooked, and of whom we have previously written, the quantity of nutriment taken was much less than that thought necessary, even after making full allowance for their small stature and weight.

Meat Extracts.—­Justus von Liebig, the great German chemist, was the first to attempt to make these on the commercial scale.  He described a method in 1847, and this not proving satisfactory, another one in 1865.  He stated that the only practicable plan on a manufacturing scale, was to treat the chopped flesh with eight to ten times its weight of water, which was to be raised to 180 deg.  F. In another passage he says it is to be boiled for half-an-hour.  After straining from all the undissolved meat fibre, etc., and carefully cleansing from all fat, the decoction is to be evaporated to a soft extract; such