condition, free from the pollution often met with in the water used for
drinking purposes. Raw fruits favour mastication, with its consequent
advantages, whilst cooked and soft food discourages it. Plums and what are
termed stone fruits, if eaten in more than very small quantities, are apt
to disagree. Persons with good digestions can take fruit with bread,
biscuits and with uncooked foods without any inconvenience. Fruit is more
likely to disagree when taken in conjunction with elaborately cooked
foods. Many cannot take fruit, especially if it be acid, at the same time
as cereal or starchy substances, and the difficulty is said to be greater
at the morning's meal. If the indigestion produced is due to the acid of
the fruit preventing the saliva acting on the starch, scientific
principles would direct that the fruit be eaten quite towards the end of
the meal. The same consideration condemns the use of mint sauce, cucumber
and vinegar, or pickles, with potatoes and bread, or even mint sauce with
green peas. Bananas are an exception, as not interfering with the
digestion of starch. Bananas are generally eaten in an unripe condition,
white and somewhat mealy; they should be kept until the starch has been
converted into sugar, when they are both more pleasant and wholesome. Nuts
and fruit go well together. For a portable meal, stoned raisins or other
dried fruit and walnut kernels or other nuts are excellent.

What has been called a defect in most fruits, is the fact that the proteid
is small in proportion to the other constituents. This has been too much
dwelt upon, owing to the prevailing exaggerated idea of the quantity of
proteid required. The tomato contains a large proportion, though the water
is very high. Bananas, grapes and strawberries contain to each part of
proteid from 10 to 12 parts of other solid nutritive constituents (any oil
being calculated into starch equivalents); this is termed the nutritive
ratio. Although this may seem a small proportion of proteid, there are
reasons for believing that it is sufficient. Taking the average of 29