age and sex of the eater and the work he or she has to perform.  The dietaries that we have seen have their proteid ratio placed unnecessarily high.  This high proteid ratio can be got by the use of the pulses, but except in small quantities they are not generally admissible, and in some of the dietaries they are ruled out.  The difficulty is got over by the liberal use of eggs, cheese and milk.  To admit a necessity for these animal products is to show a weakness and want of confidence in the sufficiency of vegetable foods.  Some of these cookery books are of use in sickness, especially as replacing those of the beef-tea, chicken-broth, jelly and arrowroot order.  They provide a half-way stage between flesh and vegetable food, such as is palatable to those who have not quite overcome a yearning for flesh and stimulating foods.  The liberal use of animal products is less likely to excite the prejudice of the ordinary medical practitioner or nurse.  Possibly, also, a higher quantity of proteid may be required on first giving up flesh foods.

The Use of Salt.—­One of the most remarkable habits of these times is the extensive use of common salt or sodium chloride.  It is in all ordinary shop bread, in large quantity in a special and much advertised cereal food, even in a largely sold wheat flour, and often in pastry.  It is added to nearly all savoury vegetable food, and many persons, not content, add still more at the time of eating.  No dinner table is considered complete without one or more salt-cellars.  Some take even threequarters of an ounce, or an ounce per day.  The question is not, of course, whether salt is necessary or not, but whether there is a sufficient quantity already existing in our foods.  Some allege that there is an essential difference between added salt and that natural to raw foods.  That the former is inorganic, non-assimilable and even poisonous; whilst the latter is organised or in organic combination and nutritive.  The writer is far from being convinced that there is a difference in food value.  Some herbivorous animals are attracted by salt, but not the carnivora.  This has been explained by the fact that potassium salts are characteristic of plants, whilst sodium chloride is the principal saline constituents of blood and of flesh.  In their food, the herbivora take three or four times as much potash salts as the carnivora.  Of course, the sodium chloride in the flesh of the herbivora and frugivora is obtained from the vegetable matter forming their food, and very few of them have the opportunity of obtaining it from salt-licks and mineral sources.  They must have the power of storing up the sodium chloride from plants in sufficient quantity, whilst the potash salts pass away.  There is no justification for saying that they are worse off by being deprived of salt.  If the ape tribe can thrive without added salt why should not man?  Bunge considers that a restriction to vegetable food causes a great desire for salt.  Opposed to this, is the fact