From MRS. WILLIAM REID, of Maryland, Lady Manager.

Wild ducks, canvassback, redheads, etc., are roasted without stuffing. After they are picked and thoroughly cleansed, roast them in a tin kitchen before a hot fire or in a quick oven for twenty-one minutes. They should be well browned on the outside, but the blood should run when cut with a knife. Unless underdone the flavor of the duck is destroyed. Fried hominy is generally served with wild duck; and fresh celery. Currant jelly is sometimes used.

SNIPE AND WOODCOCK BROILED ON TOAST.

From MRS. RUFUS S. FROST, of Massachusetts, Lady Manager.

Prepare the birds with great care; place in baking tin and put in oven. Pour into the tin enough water, boiling hot, to cover the bottom of the tin or bake pan; cover the bake pan with another tin; keep them closely covered and let them cook very steadily until tender, adding from time to time enough boiling hot water to keep birds from burning, or even sticking to the tin. When very tender remove from the oven and from the bake pan, carefully saving all the liquid in the pan, which you set on top of the stove, which is the foundation and the flavor for your sauce or gravy which you make in this pan for your birds after they are broiled. Have in an earthen dish some melted butter; dip the birds in the butter and then in Indian or corn meal and put on the gridiron to brown and finish cooking; keep them hot as possible until you serve. Arrange nicely trimmed pieces of toasted bread on the heated platter, put on each piece a bird, pour over and around the birds on the platter a sauce which you make in the bake pan in which your birds were semi- cooked, and which you have kept on top of the range while your birds were broiling. Pour into this pan of liquid or "juice" one teacup sweet cream, and thicken with one tablespoon butter, yolk of one egg and two tablespoons of Indian meal; let it boil up once just to thicken, and pour boiling hot onto the birds and toast on platter, saving some to send in separate serving dish. If you prefer flour to the corn meal to dip the birds in after the melted butter bath, use flour also to thicken the sauce or gravy, which should be a brown sauce or gravy and is generally brown enough if made in roasting pan. A prize cook in Washington once confided to me that "a leetle last year's spiced pickle syrup am luscious flavor for gravy of the wee birds, robins, quail, snipe and them like." Alas! In the same moment of flattering triumph for me, she added—triumphantly on her part also—"Lor, chile, I'se de only one libing dis day dat knows nuff to use that same, sure!"

PRAIRIE CHICKEN.

From MRS. E. S. THOMSON, of Maryland, Lady Manager.

Do not wash prairie chickens. Cover this breasts with very thin slices of bacon, or rub them well with butter; roast them before a good fire, basting them often with butter. Cook twenty minutes, salt and pepper them, and serve on a hot dish as soon as cooked.

Sauce for the above—First roll a pint of dry bread crumbs and pass half of them through a sieve. Put a small onion into a pint of milk and when it boils remove the onion and thicken the milk with the half pint of sifted crumbs; take from the fire and stir in a heaping teaspoonful of butter, a grating of nutmeg, pepper and salt. Put a little butter in a sautÉe pan, and when hot throw in the half pint of coarser crumbs which remained in the sieve; stir them over the fire until they assume a light brown color, taking care that they do not burn, and stir into them a pinch of cayenne pepper. For serving, pour over the chicken, when helped, a spoonful of the white sauce and on this place a spoonful of the crumbs.