The Swansea Gazette and Daily Shipping Register

To Mothers. —o— We are sure you would all like to have a nice hot dinner ready for the children when they come binle from suhool, instead of givii.g them so much. Bread and Butter and Bread and Jam, and tea. You may have heard that children ai'ft not growing up as broad and strong as they used to do. Home people think that now they do so many lessons their brains take a great deal of the nourishment which used to go to their bodies, and they are wondering very much how we can get the children better fed. We oil know you cannot afford to spend a single pwmiy more than you do in providing tor your little ones, and that you cannot get them Milk and Meat and Suet Puddings, which we know grow- ing children ought to have. But if we teii you of something which will make them a nourish- ing and tasty dinner two or three times a week, without costing you a penny more than it does for bread, and without taking any more lireing than it does to boil a kettle, will you try it 1 Take two loaves 1es£ a week, and spend the money in buying some lentils; they are lkd. per lb. A pound of lentils, cooked as we will show you, will make a good dinner for a family, and would cost lid., while a loaf of bread costs at least 2id. Soak the lentils for 20 minutes, rinse them well, and put them in a saucepan with a little salt, and, if you can get it, some chopped onion. Boil these in just enough water to cover them, until they are tender and are like minced meat, stir as they thicken. The children wnl enjoy this as it is, but it is nicer still with potatoes, or a little boiled rice put round it sometimes would make a change. Another day try a lentil pudding. This is like pease pudding, but it is more quickly cooked. Soak and rinse the lentils, tie them up in a cloth with a Jittie salt, and boil well. Nothing makes nicer soup than lentils. Haif- a-pound of lentils and a few vegetables will make soup for four or five children. Another time you might try a potato pie. Prepare the lentils according to the first recipe, cover them with some mashed potato, and make brown. This is especially nice with plenty of onion, and a few scraps of bacon or meat. For Sunday's dinner get a few "pieces" froat the butcher's, cook some lentils (first recipe), add them to the meat, and bake under a croat If you can manage it, get a pennyworth of curry-powder one day; it will keep a long time if it is well covered. By adding a teaspoonful to half a pound of cooked lentils, a little more onion than usual and a very little sugar, you will have a nice supper dish (with a little rico round it) for yourself and your husband. The children might lika a little curry occasionally. Try haricot beans sometimes for a change. They are very cheap, but want more soaking and cooking than lentils; they make nioo soup. Peas too, are very nourishing. If you could give the children rolled oats every day, or every other day, for breakfast instead of bread, it would be much better for them; they do not take so long to cook as oat- meal does, and are very cheap. It was all this kind of food which made Daniel and his companions "fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the King's meat" (Dan. 1. 11). in India and other parts lentils are regarded as the best food on which to take a long journey, and they are much used abroad. They con- tain more flesh-forming and fat-forming pro- perties than beef and mutton. Add to all thus that there is no cheaper food to be obtained, and we think you will be glad to have had them brought to your notice, and will never be without some in the house. Tell your neigh- bours about them. A few more hints — Do not give the ehildren cheap jam and cheap pickles with their bread; good margarine and dripping (which you can buy at the butcher's) are the right things to get if you cannot afford butter. Skim milk is much better than no milk at all, M even without the cream it has things in it which children require, but whatever milk you use don't forget to boil it. Consumption, scarlet fever and diphtheria are less likely to attack families where the milk is boiled. ftro- member that boiled rice alone is not a suSl ciently nourishing dinner for children in a cold climate, and that bread and butter and tea. is no dinner at all for YOU. Do not take tea more than twice a day, and never after it has stood more than five minutes or tIO. M.B

If you want a neat typewriten circular printed on your own note headigs, you can get it at Vaughan's Printing Works*

PI ^pftore^cem Iracteria. At a meeting of the Academy of Sciences 61 fienna, Professor Molisch, of Prague, communi- cated a paper upon phosphoresceut bacteria. He has been able to photograph the colonies of a phosphorescent micrococcus by means of its owt l,igbt. By inoculating large glass flasks of 1-2 Sltres capacity containing a suitable culture medium with the organisms, a ''bacterial lamp" is obtained with which it is quite possible for an observer at a distance on one to two metres to read a thermometer or to see the time of a watch. On a dark night the "bacterial lamp" is visible at a distance of more than sixty paces. It is suggested that such cultures ef phospnort- cfcent bacteria might be employed is powder magazines, or for attracting fish, as ths flask might be sealed up and lowered into the water. Under suitable conditions the phosphorescent properties cf the cultures last for two or thw Weeks.

Micro-Photography and Armour Plate. The application of micro-photography to metalxc And its revelations of the changes of metaHit Structure produced by various methods of work- Ing, have resulted in very striking improvements and discoveries in hardening steel. One of thf most remarkable is the" Holzer-Frith" process-ix which the alteration in the texture of the metal 11 produced by rearranging its molecular 'structure. Heat and electricity are uti'.sed as exciting agentl on the crystals of which the metal is composed, Mid are employed while the metal is surrounded bj mercury in a hermetically-sealed vessel. No great alteration in the metal is perceptible to the unaided eye; but when examined under the microscope it U Wen that the crystalline structure is very much more regular &nd uniform than before. This mean; Seater toughness, greater elasticity; the metal, af 0 Horoloyical Journal points out, will withstand greater, more sudden, and more continuous IUIÙDI throughout Its mass.

Diamonds and X-Rays. A diamond when exposed to the violet rays 011 light becomes fluorescent, the most brilliant diamonds giving out a clear blue fluorescence saO less brilliant ones becoming violet. A yellow diamond submitted by Sir William Crookes to thtOt rays gavp out a red light, and rather to the dittnaj Of its owners subsequently tuined a dingy broWII when exposed to daylight. The brownishnea proved, fortunately, only a temporary effect. ThflM experiments have suggested to Mr. Fuchs, of Chicr,go, the treatment of diamonds with Z-rays, And he s.-rys that he is able to bleach brownish ana yellow diamonds by such isseans. This does not. exhaust his claims regarding the possibilities of the By directing them through various inet, -ml chemicals before they penetrate the diamo. he believes that colour can be permanently Imparted to the stone and that it will be possible to reproduce thu3 the famous blue of the Hop" diamond or the brown of a well-known diamond in the British rpgniia. In view of the other experi. ments which have been mentioned, the JllustraUi Science ]Ÿeun i-A extremely doubtful, however, of the permanency of Mr, Fuchs's methouti

The Mystery of the Echo Hie sconce of acoustics is, as yet, in its. tIfall". and men nave much to learn before they ( -,ii solve the mystery of the echo or predict her fleeting moods, writes Miss Gertrude Baeor in Pood Wordt Helated in general terms the explanation of echoed simple and easy to understand. Soutie,, as we fcnow, is conveyed to us by vibrations of the air, which spread around from the source of sound exactly as waves of "iter spread in ever widening jings when a pebble 18 brown into a still lake. Very frequently it happens that these waves oi IOUnd, in their outward course, strike against sores Mtrface of such a nature that they are, by it, deflected bac\ again without being broken and teattered. And when it occurs that these ware» -.e returned /uch an angle as to strike the eat Of a listener, we have what we call an echo. Often own than one reflection goes to the making up ol an echo, the sound-waves being thrown from one tttsfSaee to another in thair. passage to the ear-juie M a billiard ball will rebound from cushion f cushion on ita way round the table. This, roughta I0 the cav-jse of the phenomenon. But so ending Me the v ^riations of circumstances and wriron- aent, and the effects they produce so far-reaching and hard to foresee, that we are continually being taken unawares. Sometimes fiie echo returns so ipickly that it cannot be distinguished from tht anginal sound; and yet its undetected prso- aace is enough to affect seriously the penetration Of a foice in a church or theatre, Sometimes one NOULD will produce several echoes in differswt directions, which return and return again at different time intervals, to the great dittmettam of the hearers- Again the surface of the reieotfau; Object has a great deal to do with the nature el the echo returned. Certain substances seem to have a tendency to absorb the sound-waves, aid others to eflect them more readily. Another curiooa property of sound-waves, exemplified in many wall* fcrtown buildings, is the tendency 1 the WST« to mm round a ourrtd apse or galles?*, much an a wove of the see, striking aslant 611 a shallow toy, Wlii mn round the tihw. This is the explanottaP familiar acoustic ewiosities, aoteMV Wtoapoimg SeWwy ei St F«*l'o.