That does not sound like a very meagre diet.

I am not yet prepared to say how much this ration would weigh with the water added in the processes of cooking.

The bread is computed with the water in it, which the flour takes up at forty per cent. on the weight of flour.

Meats and fish may be combined with water in different portions; as the coarse or tough parts are better in soups, stews and hashes, the water added would be in large proportion.

Hominy and meal take up several times their weight in water, while vegetables shrink both in the preparation and in cooking. I should think this unit of nutrition at three and one-third pounds would weigh about five pounds after cooking. I am too much of a sedentary man, and I find that my average ration of cooked food aside from beverages is about three and one-half pounds, and on the basis of the dietary submitted I could live well at one dollar per week.

In anticipation of this meeting I devoted Fast Day, April 2, to some experiments. I caused one of my ovens to be substantially filled with food, in eight combinations.* This experiment is repeated in one of these ovens to-night, which we will presently open.

The food purchased was as follows:

The latter part of this treatise is taken from a lecture given in Columbia Col

lege, New York, at the instance of Prof. Thomas Egleston.

Twenty pounds solid, four pounds liquid, twelve pounds water, equals thirty-six pounds, put into the oven at halfpast nine A.M.; removed from oven at two P.M. Weight of cooked food thirty-two pounds; loss by evaporation of water four pounds.

I have not computed the Calories or nutrients in this quantity. It is intended to show what can be done in one oven at one time. It took somewhat less than one hour to prepare the eight combinations, namely, one dish each. They are as follows: beef and hominy hash; veal, hominy and tomato ; mutton stew; liver and bacon with corn meal; halibut nape and potato, baked; oatmeal, plain; poor man's pudding; baked Indian pudding.

You may presently test the quality of these combinations. We have put in forty pounds this time and may take out thirty-five to thirty-six.

With such a lot of food, strong in fat and nitrogen, there should be at least twelve pounds of bread and twelve pounds of vegetables, say twenty-four pounds at two and one-half cents, sixty cents; thirty-six pounds cooked as recited, one

dollar and twenty-five cents; add for dried apple sauce or some cheap kind of fruit, fifteen cents; total, sixty pounds at a cost of two dollars.

You don't half believe it. Nor did I until I had proved it more than once. Presently you shall have an object lesson.

Now, if my method of combining nutrition and arithmetic by the standard of Calories and nutrients combined has no other result, it may lead to as much attention being given to the nutrition of the human beings in city institutions as is given to feeding the horses in the city stables. From some communications that have been made to me I am inclined to think that right at this point is a place for scientific charity.

I gave a seven-course dinner party at my house a few days since to my whist club and friends, including oranges and coffee, which cost thirteen cents each for food material. Each cigar consumed after dinner cost more than the dinner. I lately gave a dinner of four courses, soup, fish, meat and vegetables, and mush with molasses for dessert, to nine. of the poorer students at Harvard who want to economize; there were three others; each had a pound and a half of strong food. The cost for the twelve was sixty-one cents.

The quantity of oil of one hundred and fifty degrees flash test that will be consumed on this forty pounds is one and one-half pints, at one and one-half cents per pint; two and one-fourth cents.

There may be some variations to be made on the American standard.

In the judgment of Sir Henry Thompson, with whom I consulted personally, we concentrate our food a great deal too much in this country; we fine down our flour and lose. in nutrition as well as in bulk; we also eat too much meat and fat. Moreover, the ration of meat and fat which may serve us well in winter may serve us ill in summer.

In order to meet these variations we may change the thirty-day dietary. When we substitute more grain and

vegetable food we reduce the Calories per pound and we therefore require more pounds a day.

We may also change the nutrients from starch 3, proteine 1, and fat 1, to starch 4, proteine 1.1, and fat 1.

On this basis I submit Table 2, one thousand Calories to a pound, in the ratio of starch 4, proteine 1.1, fat 1.

This table is also of a somewhat rough-and-ready sort, and must be carefully revised before it can be established. You will observe that it requires four pounds of this combination at one thousand Calories per pound to give the unit of nutrition at four thousand per day, but as the price per pound is less, the variation in the cost of a day's ration comes to very little.

In this ration again milk may be substituted for some of the meat and fat.

It will be observed that in these low-priced dietaries I have not included eggs. In our factory boarding-houses in Massachusetts the consumption of eggs per adult is one every other day. One egg every other day at sixteen and one-half cents a dozen comes to three dollars a year per adult; fifty million adults, one hundred and fifty million dollars ($150,000,000) a year for eggs! the measure of the hen industry.

If eggs are added at four per week, at three cents each (city prices for fresh eggs), twelve cents; with fruit at eight cents per week; tea and coffee, seven cents; total for extras twenty-seven cents, the unit of nutrition at the low-priced standard would be as follows:

Per Day.

Class 1. Food, $0 20 eggs, fruit and beverage, $0 04, .

$0.24

This is a sketch of the elements of the science or art of nutrition, which may perhaps be perfected and may possibly be taught in the common school arithmetics.

I have thus presented a theory of nutrition at a minimum cost. But it could only be attained in practice by people of