K. DOMESTIC ECONOMY. 455 



TREATMENT OF FRESH VEGETABLES. 



Those who value fresh vegetables and sweet salads will 

 never have them washed in the garden. Neither the one 

 nor the other should be washed, says the Gardeners' Chroni- 

 cle, until they are just about to be cooked or eaten. Even 

 potatoes lose flavor quickly after being washed ; so do car- 

 rots and turnips; while water will speedily become tainted 

 in summer in contact with cauliflowers and cabbages, and 

 thus destroy their freshness and flavor. The case is still 

 worse with salads. If washed at all, it should be only just 

 before they are dressed, and they should be dried and dressed 

 immediately. Nothing ruins the flavor of vegetables and 

 renders good salads uneatable sooner than water hanging 

 about them. If lettuces are quite clean, they make the best 

 salad unwashed ; but, if washed, the operation should be done 

 quickly, the water instantly shaken out, and the leaves dried 

 with a clean cloth. 



The best practice is simply to remove all superfluous earth 

 by scraping or rubbing, and all rough tops or leaves by cut- 

 ting. Enough tender leaves may still be left on cauliflowers 

 and broccoli to overlap the flowers. Salad should be sent in 

 from the garden with most of the outside leaves and main 

 root on. The tender leaves are easily tainted and injured by 

 exposure, and if the chief root is cut off" sharp, much of the 

 juice oozes out at the w T ound. Where vegetables and salads 

 have to be bought from a green-grocer, the conditions are 

 altogether different. Not only washing, but soaking, often 

 becomes requisite to restore something like pristine crispness. 

 18^4, May 31,1872,268. 



USE OF ANAESTHETICS IX BUTCHERING. 



Dr. Richardson has lately urged, in a paper before the Medi- 

 cal Society of London, the employment of anaesthetics in kill- 

 ing animals for the table, as banishing the pain, and removing 

 the distressing features attendant upon the methods at pres- 

 ent adopted by the butchers. He proposes, as a preliminary 

 to the Wow of the poleaxe or the knife of the slaughter-house, 

 the use of a combination of coal gas with bichloride of methy- 

 lene or chloromethyl. The apparatus for applying this con- 

 sists of a tin reservoir, which is hung to a nail in the wall of 



