your coffee pure. Jamaica coffee is of moderate price, and, in a family, makes a good and cheap breakfast beverage.

Sugar is an article which varies in price every season, but the best is always the cheapest. For tea or coffee good loaf-sugar is pleasanter, and quite as economical as the moist. For preserving, loaf-sugar of the second quality should be used. There are some purposes for which moist sugar is best suited; then the coarse shining kind is purest, but it is much more frequently adulterated than the loaf-sugar.

Soap should be bought in large slabs, and kept in a cool place to dry gradually. For the bedrooms honeysoap is cheap, pleasant, and useful.

Candles should be suspended from the ceiling in a cool storeroom or kept in a tin-box to preserve them from the mice. The common dip-candles are best for the kitchen, and the composite, spermaceti, or wax for the family. It is advisable to buy them directly from the maker.

Beef is the most economic meat for a large family. The best joints are certainly the sirloin, the crop or ribs, and the round; but the edge-bone, the buttock, the thin flank, and the brisket are cheap and useful joints in a family. Good beef is easily distinguished by a practised eye. It is of fine, smooth, open grain; the colour of the fat should be white and the lean a bright red. If the colour be dark and of a brick-dust hue and the fat hard and skinny, it will certainly be tough and unwholesome, and is dear at any price.

Mutton requires the purchaser to have experience and discrimination to avoid being deceived. The fat should be firm and white, the lean clear and red, and should feel tender when pressed between the finger and thumb. If the flesh be pale and the fat yellowish, the mutton is unwholesome. The best joints of mutton are the haunch, the saddle, and the leg. Of these only the leg is useful in a family; the shoulder and the neck are usually sold a penny in the pound cheaper, and if not too fat may be

economically used, but if very fat, should be distrusted, being usually over-fed.

Veal may be known to be good by being fat, not too large, firm in the flesh, and of white colour. If the flesh be flabby, or discoloured by green or yellow spots, the meat should be rejected; it is, or soon will be, unfit for eating. The prime joints of veal are the loin and the leg for roasting, and the breast for stewing or some delicate made-dish; but every part of the calf is excellent food. The head and the heels are especially valuable for their nourishing qualities. The shoulder may be usually bought cheap, and is a very useful family joint.

Lamb should never be bought for a family when very young and small. About five months old the lamb is of good size, and the price is not extravagant. It should be examined like mutton to ascertain its quality. The fore-quarter is the best joint, the leg the most economical.

It

Pork differs much in quality according to the mode of feeding, and it is always desirable to know who fed the pig, if possible, before you buy the meat. Butchers are sometimes in the habit of keeping pigs and feeding them on the nauseous and decaying offal of the shambles. is never safe to buy your pork from a butcher that feeds pigs himself. The farm-house or the miller's pigs are generally fed wholesomely, and kept clean; and you may depend on pork or bacon bought directly from them. Pork should not be too fat, the meat should be close in the grain, and fat and lean should be of a pinkish white. It is not a very wholesome or economical meat for a family when eaten fresh, though when salted it is the prime dish of the poor labourer, and most useful meat to every rank of society.

Fish may be chosen generally with great certainty after a little experience. The eyes should always appear bright, the flesh should be firm and elastic, the gills of a bright red, and the body of the fish stiff. Then it may be depended on as fresh and wholesome; but if flabby,

the gills dark, and the eyes dull, the fish is unfit to eat. When good and in season there are many kinds of fish most useful and economical in large families. We would mention the halibut, a fish which so nearly resembles flesh meat that it can hardly be distinguished from veal when in a pie, and is nutritive and cheap. Haddocks, in season, and herrings, when perfectly fresh, make excellent family dishes.

Poultry may be chosen by their plumpness, by the skin, which should be clear and white, and by the legs, which should be smooth and pliant. In large families poultry is considered a luxury, and is certainly not useful provision; but a roast goose, in the country, where the fowl is rarely sold for more than five shillings, is not a great extravagance.

In the sale of butter much deception may be practised, but a good housewife generally contrives to buy it from some country dairy on which she can depend. The small additional price paid for the certainty of escaping imposition is well spent.

All green vegetables should be bought directly from the gardens; if they have been cut for twenty-four hours the juice and crispness is gone, and they become unwholesome. The thin-skinned fruits suffer also from being kept after being pulled. Apples and pears, on the contrary, improve by keeping.

One of the most difficult parts of household consumption for a mistress to attend to is the coals. She may buy good coals at the right time, but she cannot constantly attend in the coal-cellar to see how the servants manage them. It is advisable to buy, at the same time, a quantity of the very best coals to be met with at the mart, and the same quantity of small coals called nuts, which are but half the price of the best. Have these placed in the cellar in distinct heaps, and insist on the servants mixing them in the coal-pans when they are brought up. Thus mixed, they make a better and brighter fire than ir separate, and the plan is economical; for if they are

PRECAUTIONS AGAINST FIRE.

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mixed when turned down, the servants invariably pick out the large, and leave the small coals.

The enormous quantity of coal used in London produces one of the great household inconveniences of the place. We allude to the unconsumed portions which fill the air, enter through opened windows, and fall on the furniture, curtains and garments, destroying or sullying all the labours of cleanliness.

As it is absolutely necessary to admit air into the houses if we desire to retain health, it has been found that wide coarse muslin nailed to the wood frame and stretched across the window for about three-quarters of a yard, or as far as it is usually opened, effectually prevents the admission of those black particles which are such an offence to a good housewife.

It is impossible for any master or mistress of a house to be too particular in guarding against the danger of fire; they should impress on servants and children the necessity of precaution and the frightful consequences that may arise from a neglect of it. It is an excellent plan for one of the family every night to go round the house in the dark, after the servants have gone to bed, to examine every room and closet where a spark might have been dropped.

If the kitchen-chimney has accidentally taken fire, a wet blanket should be hung before the grate, every aperture closed into the chimney, and the fire will then soon go out.

At the first breaking out of flames in any part of the house, wetted blankets thrown upon them are frequently useful in extinguishing the fire. In towns it is always desirable to have a window or trap-door opening upon the roof, and a ladder near it, that persons may escape in case of the staircase being on fire.

The bedsteads of servants should never have curtains; they are not only more healthy without them, but the risk of danger from a carelessly placed candle is less.

It is a simple and easy precaution to have in each

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PRECAUTIONS AGAINST FIRE.

bedroom a rope strong enough to bear the weight of one person, with one end always made fast to some substantial hold in the room, and at the other end a noose to let down children or aged persons in case of fire. It should be long enough to reach the ground, and have knots at intervals to rest the hands and feet of those who desired to descend by it.