Produced by Julia Miller, Thiers Halliwell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
In this plain text version, bold script is denoted by =equals signs= and italic script by _underscores_. Text that was originally rendered in small capitals now appears in full capitals.
No attempt has been made to standardise the numerous inconsistencies throughout the text with respect to punctuation, [e.g. (No. 490,)/(No. 490.)/(No. 490)/(No. 490).], spelling, case and hyphenation [e.g. P. 36/p. 88, DR. MOFFETT/Dr. MUFFETT, Colton/Coulton, toothach/toothache, Head-Ach/Head-ach/Head-ache, nightmare/Night-Mare/night-mare, mouthsful/mouthfuls, scum/skum, table-spoonful/tablespooonful, Curacoa/Curaçoa, and others]. These and various archaic spellings all remain as in the original. The transcription also replicates the original text in its use of upper case, lower case, small capitals, and italics.
On the other hand, several errors, omissions and uncertainties were corrected after referring to the subsequent edition (3rd) of the book for clarification: for example, missing characters resulting from incomplete scan images; missing quotation marks; a missing value for 'Port' in the table on page 138; and a three-paragraph apparent 'blockquote' on page 141 (actually a partial footnote that had become separated from its preceding paragraphs on page 139), is now reunited with the rest of the footnote. A few incorrect page references have been rectified.
The incorrect sequencing of the index replicates that in the original publication. In that era the letters i and j were interchangeable, and words beginning with these letters are grouped together in the index. The words and abbreviations Ditto, ditto, Do., do., are used inconsistently in the index.
Numbered items (sometimes asterisked) of the style (No. 463*) are references to the 3rd edition of "The Cook's Oracle" as mentioned at the top of the page that follows the Contents list.
The footnotes, which are numerous and sometimes lengthy, have been relocated to the end of the e-book. A few of the original cross-references pointed to the _page_ on which the relevant footnote was located rather than to the footnote itself. As the footnotes are no longer on those pages, readers of this plain text version might have difficulty following such cross-references. On page 17, reference to a footnote that simply stated 'see Index' has been changed to an in-line reference (as used elsewhere in the text).