Coffee-making is a more intricate affair, and cannot be fully conveyed in a receipt. The coffee must be slowly roasted, not burnt, and brought only to an amber brown; it must be roasted day by day, and reduced by pounding to an impalpable powder. In making it, two opposite and apparently incompatible ends are to be secured - strength and flavor. To obtain the first, it must be boiled; by boiling, the second is lost. The difficulty is surmounted by a double process, - one thorough cooking, one slight one; by the first a strong infusion is obtained, by the second that infusion is flavored. Thus a large pot with coffee-lees stands simmering by the fire; this is the sherbet. When a cup is wanted, the pounded coffee is put in the little tin or copper pan, and placed on the embers; it fumes for a moment, then the sherbet is poured on; in a few seconds the Troth (calinah) rises; presently an indication that it is about to boil is made manifest, when the coffee is instantly taken from the fire, carried into the apartment, turned into the cup, and drunk."-Ur-quharta Pillars of Hercules.

As to water - every one knows that plumbers make the bottoms of the cisterns thicker than the sides, because the water eats the lead away; hard water does 6o more than soft, and water from the same source more at some times than others. Lead, as the phrase is, accumulates in the system, so that ever so little, taken day by day, at length sums up to a poisonous dose sufficient to mar the health. The remedy for this mischief is simply to have the pipes made of gutta percha. Many spring waters, though of course free from the animal impurities, abound still more in the medicinal. To render such waters fit for healthful use, some process of purification is absolutely essential, and such purification very perceptively improves both their cooking and washing properties.

Ordinary filters certainly free water from a considerable quantity of dirt, but not from the medicinal ingredients, nor even from all the animalculae, some of which, though quite visible as monsters with a microscope, nevertheless find their way through the filter. One of the simplest processes of purification, if people will only take the trouble to perform it - and it is surely worth it for the increase of comfort and the advantage to health - is - for every forty gallons that the cistern holds to pour in one gallon of lime-water; this has the effect of throwing down from the water a large proportion of the chemical ingredients, and no small multitude of the animalculae. Another method of purification is by long slow boiling, then allowing the water to cool, and filtering it. Some trouble no doubt there is in any such course; but pure water, like pure air, is essential to a life of health, and those who will not be at the trouble, must make up their minds to some degree of infirmity and unhappiness.

The subject of the Water-supply to large towns is one of the highest importance to the well-being of the community, The quality of water for domestic purposes depends mainly upon its degree of hardness or softness; and this in its turn depends almost entirely upon the quantity of lime dissolved in some form or other in the water. It is found, upon experiment, that one gallon (weighing 70,000 grains) of pure water will not dissolve more than two grains of chalk, and so acquire two degrees of hardness; and that whenever more is contained in water, the excess is always owing to the presence of carbonic acid gas, which enables it to dissolve a much larger quantity. The practical part of our subject depends on this fact; for if by any means we can get rid of the carbonic acid, the dissolved chalk is necessarily precipitated, and the hard water, unfit for culinary and domestic purposes, becomes soft, and well adapted to both these uses. Carbonic acid is in part expelled from water by heating it to the boiling point: a still larger quantity is got rid of after boiling for some few minutes, and nearly every trace disappears at the end of half an hour; and just in proportion as the carbonic acid gas is expelled, so does the chalk fall, rendering the water in the first instance turbid, and becoming deposited .on the interior surface of kettles, where it forms the well-known rock of fur.

It has been found that water of 14 degrees of hardness lost two degrees when merely made to boil; boiling for five minutes reduced the hardness to 6 degrees; and for a quarter of an hour, to little more than 4 degrees. The practical application of this knowledge needs scarcely to be pointed out. Whenever a soft water is required, boil for several minutes before using. In making tea, for instance, the economy and general superiority of a soft water is well known. How many a young gentleman, with a smattering of science just enough to inform him that water gets no hotter however long or violently it is boiled, has laughed at his grandmother's antiquated notions, because she requested that the water might be made to boil thoroughly before the tea was made: the old lady could give no very satisfactory explanation of her prejudice, yet it was not the less a correct one.

Before going further in this matter, it may be stated that there are some waters in which the lime is dissolved in the form of gypsum (sulphate of lime): in these, the hardness is of a permanent character, and cannot be lessened by boiling. Tea made under such circumstances may be improved, either by the addition of a very small quantity of carbonate of soda, or the tea should be kept soaking for half an hour, under such circumstances as will retain the heat.

In washing, the use of hard water is, as is well known, extremely prejudicial. The explanation is exceedingly simple: every degree of hardness in a gallon of water destroys 10 grains of soap.

There is one practical matter of great importance, to which we wish to draw the attention of all concerned: it is the effect of boiling linen in hard water. If clothes are put into cold water, and then boiled the precipitation of chalk takes place on the clothes, and whatever coloring matter exists in the water goes down with the chalk, and also becomes attached to the linen, rendering it of that disagreeable and unremovable dirty hue which is so characteristic of certain laundries. If boiling is absolutely requisite for white fabrics, it should be done in water which has been boiled half an hour, allowed to stand, and then poured off from the sediment; otherwise, from the immediate precipitation of the chalk, the dirt is boiled in and thoroughly fixed to the fabric. A moment's consideration will convince any one, that a deposit similar to the fur in a tea-kettle cannot be expected to improve the appearance of white linen. Where clean rain water can be obtained, there is no objection to the boiling of clothes in it; as, being absolutely free from lime, no precipitation can take place. The use of soda in softening water employed in washing, is well known; but the remedy is not without its own evil: it weakens the fibre of the cloth, and unless it is much more thoroughly removed by rinsing than is usually the case, it occasions a very permanent yellow tinge when the cloth is heated.