For those who live in the country, or those who spend the early summer months in towns and have their flowers sent up, no family of plants are more useful than the Campanulas (all described in the 'English Flower Garden'). Perhaps the one we could least do without is the beautiful C. persicifolia. It takes little room, is a true perennial, and divides well in the autumn. In light soils it flowers better if treated as a biennial and sown in a seed bed annually, so as to have a good supply of young plants every year. The seed sown in June or July can be planted out in October and potted up the autumn of the second year for flowering in pots in the early spring in a greenhouse. They are then good strong plants, and several can be put in one fairly large pot. C. grandis is a stronger and coarser plant. It is far more beautiful for picking if grown in a poor soil and under the shade of bushes or trees. But it is hardly worth growing in a small garden, though it is what I call a friend among plants; it gives a good deal, and requires so little, and looks cool and beautiful when picked and placed by itself in a large glass bowl filled with water. Its tiny rosette-like leaf-growth is also useful, attractive, and ornamental, especially in the autumn. It travels as well as the other Campanulas, only it must be picked in bud. The flowers expand well in water; so do those of the common Canterbury Bell.

As a summer luncheon dish this Mayonnaise souffle of crab is rather out of the common:-Slightly butter the lining of a souffle-case, pin a buttered band of paper round rather high, and season the eatable part of a crab with pepper, salt, oil, and vinegar; whip some nice aspic jelly, and put a little in the bottom of the lining. Make a bed of Mayonnaise sauce on the top of the aspic, put in the crab, then some more chopped aspic; it should be about three inches above the tin lining. Stand it in the ice-box till wanted. Put the lining in the case, sprinkle with fried breadcrumbs, and serve with a plate of chopped aspic jelly apart.

A less complicated luncheon dish is as follows:-Take some ripe tomatoes, equal-sized; cut a round hole and scoop out a portion of the middle, fill in with cold minced chicken and Mayonnaise sauce, put some aspic in the dish, and serve the tomatoes, on round pieces of fried bread, cold. •

The following fresh chutney is good with any roast or cold meat:-Equal parts of cucumber, onion, and sultanas chopped very fine, some salt and cayenne. Moisten with vinegar, and press for two hours. It will keep some time: when wanted for use, warm in a little gravy and let it get cold.

A very much prettier way than the usual English one of serving cauliflower is to break it up in pieces large enough for one helping; boil them very lightly, so that they should be quite firm and dry, almost crisp. It quite spoils them if they are soft and sodden. Serve apart, in a good-sized boat, some white creamy sauce into which you grate a little Parmesan cheese.

Small pieces of cauliflower put into clear soup, and Parmesan cheese handed apart, is a good way of using up cauliflowers that are just beginning to run to seed.

Young onions boiled in clear soup give it an unusual and gelatinous consistency.

Raw sliced cucumber is quite a different dish if cut very thin and soaked in salt and water for two or three hours before it is wanted. It is then drained and pressed, and served with oil, vinegar, and pepper, in the usual way.

There are several ways of cooking cucumbers; I suggest the following:-Peel and cut up a cucumber into pieces about two inches long, and divide each piece into two. Soak them for two or three hours in brown sugar and vinegar. Stew them in a little stock, and serve them as a vegetable.

Another way is to stew these pieces in a little butter. Make the sauce apart by boiling the peel in a little milk and butter, rub it through a fine sieve, mix in a little yelk of egg and pour over the pieces.

A third way is to take a large old cucumber, peel it, cut off the two ends, and boil it very lightly. When done, make an incision down the middle, not quite to the two ends. Scoop out the seeds, and fill in the hollow with a light stuffing of suet, herbs, breadcrumbs, and egg. Serve it whole, like a rolly-poly pudding, with a yellow Dutch sauce round it.

I find, all through the year, that a compote is a much more popular way of cooking fruit than in a tart. The great secret of making compotes is to stew some fruits, and only to pour boiling syrup over others. For instance, Red Currants are not good unless stewed for some time in an earthenware dish in the oven. Raspberries are quite spoilt by this treatment.