Can you give me a recipe for making honey mead ? I have en- ' deavoured to make it, but it has turned sour on my hands, and I cannot procure a recipe from cookery books where such informa- j ]' tion is generally looked for." (1). We can- not say whether any of our correspondents have tried that method of preserving meat. Perhaps some of them will give the infor- mation required. (2). The following is a recipe for making that very old English drink, mead : — For a ten -gallon cask, allow y twenty pounds of honey, and fourteen gal- lons of water ; boil and skim it : then add one ounce of cinnamon, one ounce of carda- ir moms, one and a half onnce of Jamaica pepper, two ounces of ginger, a quarter of an ounce of coriander seed, and a few shavings of isinglass. — Boil these ingredients J }> for half an hour, and when cool stir in a wine-glass full of yeast. Next day pour it through a cloth into the cask, and allow it to ferment for ten days. In a fortnight ». mere it may be bottled, and the cork ig sealed. Q CAPT. MOON, Waiwera, asks:-" Could you inform me when Captain McMahon was r appointed Speaker of the Legislative Assem- bly of Victoria ?" He has been elected Speaker for the second time. The only Australian Handbooks we have been able to find in Dunedin are those for 1872-73 and 74, and they contain Captain McMahon's



name as Speaker. There are very low Australian books of reference in the Ataec oeum. We will have another look. M L., Waikouati.— Too long and dry. A MINER, Bluespur, asks us to explain th& difference between giant powder, dynamite and lithofracteur. Giant powder and dyna- - mite are one and the same thing — infusorial earth and nitro-glycerine. Lithufzuctoujf is dyamite with coal, soda, saltpeter and sulphur. Then there is dualin— sawdust saturated with nitro-glycerine and saltpeter j vulcan powder, a product similar to litho- fracteur, rend-rock, and various other com* pounds, driving their explosive force from uitro-glycerine. Of all the powerful explo- sives now used, the best and safest is said to be pulp- compressed gun cotton, whose density is 62 lbs per cubic foot, and it is considered six times as strong as gunpowder. D. 