ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1107, 19 May 1893, Page 14

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Jessie, G— To salt beef, rub the meat well with common salt, and let it be'a day and night to extract the blood. Wipe dry, and put under a press to flatten. Then for every 121 b of beef allow lib each of coarse sugar, common salt, and bay salt, and loz of saltpetre; rub this mixture in well in all parts for a month, turning the meat once a day. Alice M., Haweba.—The following, amongst others, are some of the general uses to which waste-paper can be applied with advantage: After a stove has been blackened, it can be kept looking very well for a long time by rubbing it with paper every morning. Eubbing with paper is a much nicer way of keeping the outside of • a teakettle or teapot bright and clean than the old way of washing it in suds. Eubbing them with paper is also the best way of polishing knives and tinware after scouring them. If a little soap be held on the paper in rubbing tinware and spoons they shine like new silver. For polishing mirrors, windows, lamp chimneys, etc., paper is better than dry cloth. Preserves and i piokles keep much better if brown paper, instead of cloth, is tied over the jar. Canned fruit is not apt to mould if a piece of writ-ing-paper, cut to fit each can, is laid directly upon the fruit. Paper is much better to put under carpet than straw. It is thinner, warmer, and makes less noise when one walks over it. Two thicknesses of paper placed between the other coverings on a bed are as warm as a quilt. If it is necessary to step upon a chair, always lay paper upon it, and thus save the paint and woodwork from damage.

H.N.—Premature greyness is not uncommon. The hair of young people often becomes grey in patches. These colourless hairs, denoting insufficiency of pigmentary secretion, are due either to general debility of health or to the want of local nutrition and vitality. At your age you should certainly have a nourishing and a generous diet. To live upon biscuits, cake, and bread-and-butter, as you say you have been doing, is undoubtedly at the root of the trouble. Iron taken internally is the best remedy for greyness. Get a good iron tonic from a respectable druggist. As a strengthening lotion for the hair, to check its continued falling, apply three times a week the following formula: Tincture of nux vomica, 3 drachms; distilled vinegar, 2£oz; tincture of capsicum, 1 drachm; tincture of cantharides, 6 drachms; spirit of rosemary, 1 oz; rose water, 6 oz. As to diet, you must eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, and you should at least have on good meal every day. A glass of good port wine every day would also be good for you.

Did you ever see a Chinese baby ? I have seen numbers of them in San Francisco, says an American lady, and I always wondered why they looked so solemn, just as if they had already taken upon their baby shoulders the world s weight of woe and misery. The naming of a Chinese baby always takes place when it is a month old. It is then clad in a light red garment and all its friends and relatives, at least all such as have presented it with a gift since its birth, are bidden to a feast. The ceremony of shaving its head, called ' munefut,' is also then performed for the first time. A very aged man is chosen for the barber, and the hair is wrapped in a paper and carefully preserved. The little hero of the hour is now presented with a red bed, a low chair of the same colour, and a cap with gold, silver, or copper ornaments, according to the station of the parents. Before the child is put into its bed, the father consults a calendar, which tells him that at certain times various articles are to be removed from the child's vision. For instance, on one day in the year, it is unlucky that he should see anything made of bamboo, at other times articles made of iron, or copper, or silver are proscribed. No wonder that a Chinese baby looks solemn, surrounded by such a web of superstition.