w pipe; a coal oil lamp should not be used.

By the above test, after a little practice, so small an adulteration
as one or two per cent. can be detected; it is, however, only a test
of the purity or impurity of a lead, and if found adulterated, the
degree or percentage of adulteration cannot be well ascertained by it.

Jewellers usually have all the necessary apparatus for making the
test, and any one of them can readily make it by observing the above
directions, and from them can be obtained a blow pipe at small cost.

If you have no open package of the lead to be tested, a sample can
most easily be obtained by boring into the side or top of a keg with
a gimlet, and with it taking out the required quantity; care should be
used to free it entirely from the borings or particles of wood, and it
should not be larger than the size mentioned; a larger quantity can be
reduced, but of course more time will be required, and the experiment
cannot be so neatly performed.

* * * * *

HOW TO BUILD A CHIMNEY.

MESSRS. EDITORS:--I am satisfied that a great many fires originate
through poorly constructed chimneys; and, although not a bricklayer
by trade, I would offer a few hints how to construct a fire-proof
chimney. Let the bed be laid of brick and mortar, iron, or stone; then
the workman should take a brick in his left hand, and with the trowel,
draw the mortar upon the end of the brick, from the under side, and
not from the outside edge, as is usual. Then, by pressing the brick
against the next one, the whole space between the two bricks will be
filled with mortar; and so he should point up the inside as perfectly
as the outside, as he proceeds.

By drawing the mortar on the edge of the brick, the space between
the ends will not always be entirely filled, and will make (where the
inside pointing is not attended to) a leaky and unsafe chimney, which,
if not kept clear of soot, will, in burning out, stand a good chance
of setting the building on fire. The best thing that I know of, to
put the fire out in a burning chimney is salt; but the matter of first
importance, after having a chimney properly constructed, is to keep it
clean.

AUSTIN B. CULVER.
Westfield, N. Y.

* * * * *

CRYSTALLIZED HONEY.

MESSRS. EDITORS:--Please allow me to say to the querist who, through
your columns, asks what to do with crystalline honey, that if he will
"doctor" it with