way in imparting the rich yellow hue of real mustard to a pale counterfeit of wheat flour and terra-alba, or the defective paleness of artificial black pepper is brought up to the desired tone by the judicious sifting in of a little finely pulverized charcoal. Enough has been already given to show that the field for sophistications of this sort is a wide one, and offers large scope for the development of inventive genius; so that each manufacturer of articles of this class would be likely to possess his own trade secrets. It will be observed that the adulterating materials just mentioned all belong to the class claimed to be harmless. In no instance has any poisonous substance been discovered. The proportion of foreign and genuine substances in the spices varies between wide limits, in some instances the former being slight, in others, the latter seemingly present in just sufficient quanity to impart faintly the requisite taste or odor. Even this small proportion of the professed article is occasionally still further diminished by the substitution of other substances, as, for example, in imparting to corn meal finely ground, a pungency suggestive of real ginger by the addition of a little salt and red pepper.

GROUP VII.

Thirty-five samples of unroasted coffee have been received. In five packages, a few grains were discovered which had been slightly colored or faced. A minute quantity of blue pigment adhered to the more prominent parts of the bean, giving a somewhat brighter color to the coffee when viewed in the mass. It was apparently Prussian blue, the quantity obtained being too minute to permit satisfactory chemical tests. No lead chromate could be recognized. This coloring matter would all doubtless be separated from the coffee in the process of roasting when it is revolved in a wire cage over the fire. The coffee thus colored was of inferior quality and offered room for improvement. The three samples of roasted, unground coffee were of excellent quality and free from any admixture of foreign substance. The ground coffee, sold in packages, as the statistics show, was all, excepting two packages, more or less sophisticated. The foreign substances were generally found to be chiccory, beans, and less frequently, wheat or other grain coarsely ground. In one package marked coffee, with an ingeniously ambiguous qualification, no coffee at all was found, but roasted hominy. Three samples, labelled coffee-extract, coffee essence, and coffee surrogate, were composed chiefly of caramel and liquorice, and contained no coffee.

Forty-three samples of green tea, and eighteen of black tea have been received. Many of these are of the cheapest and most inferior quality, some of them mere tea-rubbish, yet no leaf, or fragment of a leaf, which has been examined could be considered any thing but tea. As to mineral matter I have not succeeded in detecting any thing which may not perhaps be fairly credited to the rude and careless manner in which it is handled by the rough employees of the tea farm. Neither have any positive evidences been discovered of the admixture of exhausted leaves. If they are present, the admixture is too slight to render detection possible by determination of the percentage of extract of tannin.

Of cocoa, and its preparations, one sample of cocoa nibs, and five of chocolate, were received. The latter being a professedly manufactured and mixed article, for which there is no standard formula, it could not properly be considered adulterated. .

Three samples of chiccory have been examined one of which was mixed with caramel and is therefore entered as adulterated.

METHODS OF EXAMINATION.

It unfortunately happens that in case of the great majority of food articles included in groups V and VII, the only positive means of demonstrating the presence of foreign substances requires special skill in the application of chemical knowledge or in the use of the microscope. Hence, any elaborate discussion of the detailed examination of each class of articles would be without value or interest to the public, and also to the expert chemist and microscopist, as I have found the usual and well-known methods of investigation fully adequate. The examination of canned fruits and vegetables for copper, tin, and lead, possibly derived from the metallic vessels in which they are prepared and preserved, is of course purely chemical. The search for foreign vegetable substances in the spices, coffee and tea, can depend only in a limited degree on chemical analysis, since many of these substances, however widely different in general appearance, and even in origin, are but slightly differentiated in their chemical properties. This difficulty, however, is most fully compensated by the marvellous variety of structure every where visible in all vegetable tissues. However similar the fruit, seeds, or leaves of two plants, even of the same order or genus, some constant and invariable difference of structure is sure to be found, which constitutes, in such investigations as these, the means of their instant and certain distinction. The eye must first be made familiar by patient practice with the structural characters of the genuine article, which is to serve as the standard of comparison. This being accomplished, a foreign fragment is instantly distinguished as foreign, whether its identity can be ascertained or not. Even this is an important step in the examination of a food article. But as these stranger forms are likely to occur frequently, and are not very numerous relatively, they are soon traced to their origin. Hence to the microscopist the discrimination, for example. of the starch grains of the various starch bearing tubers, grains and seeds, is as simple and, in fact, of precisely the same sort as the discrimination of the various fruits of the garden by the ordinary observer, who has acquired this power by repeated, though perhaps unconscious, comparisons.

The detection of the more common adulterations of ground coffee, presents an exception in some degree to the remarks just made, arising from two differences of the roasted bean from the substances commonly found mingled with it. The roasted coffee bean softens very slowly in water, while leguminous and farinaceous substances soften rapidly-it very slowly colors the water on which it floats or in which it sinks, while they generally sink more readily, and rapidly impart a brown color to the water. Hence by a little practice in crushing beneath the point of a knife, or between the teeth, genuine coffee and fragments of chiccory, roasted peas, beans, etc., both having been previously well moistened, a very marked difference will be perceived and which may be found of much practical use. The widely published method of discriminating coffee from chicory, by the circumstance that the former will continue to float on cold water while the latter will rapidly sink, I have not found to be a trustworthy test. In this case, as in the others, however, the microscope constitutes the court of final resort.

Those who are interested in the detection of food adulterations by means of the microscope, will derive great assistance in the beginning of their work from the engravings and descriptions of microscopic structure contained in Dr. Hassall's elaborate treatise on Food; its adulterations, and the methods for their detection; Bell's Analysis and Adulteration of Foods, and other such books. The study of engravings, however, must not be expected to take the place of the vegetable tissue itself for practical purposes.

SPICE MIXTURES.

In addition to the samples of food articles already mentioned, I have also received a considerable number of the so-called spice mixtures. It is probably not so widely known as it should be, that the demand for the materials for adulteration has called into existence a branch of manufacturing industry of no insignificant magnitude, having for its sole object the production of articles known as spice mixtures, or pepper dust. The use of pepper dust, or as the article is commonly designated in the technical language of the trade, by its abbreviation, "P. D." is a venerable fraud. So long ago as 1820, when Frederick Accum made his memorable revelation in London, by the publication of his book on the Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons, he observed that "ground pepper is very often sophisticated by adding to a portion of genuine pepper, a quantity of pepper dust, or the sweepings from the pepper warehouses, mixed with a little cayenne pepper. The sweepings are known, and purchased in the market under the name of P. D., signifying pepper dust. An inferior sort of this vile refuse, or the sweepings of P. D., is distinguished among vendors by the abbreviation D. P. D., denoting dust (dirt), of pepper dust." P. 286. Indeed, much of this curious old and somewhat rare book reads as if it had just been written.

The manufacture of P. D. is now a regular branch of business, and the original and specific term pepper dust has expanded with the progress of inventive art to gigantic proportions, until now we have, as well known articles, sold by the barrel, "P. D. Pepper," "P. D. Ginger," "P. D. Cloves," and so on through the whole aromatic list. When it is considered that these imitations, lacking only such flavoring with the genuine article as the dealer thinks necessary to make his goods sell, are sold at from three to four cents a pound, and the retail price paid by the consumer is compared with it, the strength of the temptation to engage in such practices is clearly seen. When manufacturers openly advertise themselves as assorters and renovators of merchandise, and openly propose to cleanse musty and damaged beans by a new and patented process, it is full time that its significance should be considered by the public.

MANUFACTURED FOOD ARTICLES.

In the progress of this investigation, the subject of permitting the manufacture and sale of certain articles deprived of some of their natural constituents, or with the addition of certain substances, has frequently occurred. For example; mustard is generally deprived of its fixed oil in the process of manufacture, and is improved for all ordinary uses thereby. A similar practice is now extensively applied to cloves which

are not likewise improved, but robbed of the very constituent on which It is proposed to sell mixtures of chiccory and their value depends. coffee as such, stating the proportions of each on the package, so that no one shall be deceived. To this, and, in fact, to all similar propositions, it is to be objected, that advantage would immediately be taken of the fact that it would generally be difficult in the extreme, and, in some cases at least, absolutely impossible, to establish the fact in a court of justice, whether a definitely fixed proportion had been exceeded or not. Bearing in mind the wide difference between the ease of demonstrating, often by diverse methods, that a foreign substance is present, and the difficulty of demonstrating absolutely its percentage by weight, it will be plain how greatly the administration of the law would be simplified which should prohibit the manufacture and sale of all mixtures, with possibly a few exceptions, leaving to the consumer the privilege and Protection and even indorsement is pleasure of suiting his own tastes.

claimed for some of these most worthless mixtures, on the ground that they are harmless, while the fact that they are counterfeit articles, as really as is a fictitious bank bill, is studiously left out of consideration. The simplest and best way is to require that things shall be called by Very respectfully, their right names.

S. A. LATTIMORE.

GROUP VI.

SUGARS; SYRUPS; MOLASSES; GLUCOSE; CONFECTIONERY; HONEY, AND SODA-WATER SYRUPS.

By W. H. PITT, M. D.

To the Chairman of the Sanitary Committee of the State Board of Health: SIR-I have the honor to make the following report on the group assigned me for investigation.

GLUCOSE.

now so largely manufactured, and dealers and confectioners, I have Although artificial glucose has extent in some of the countries

Since the glucose or starch sugar is finds a ready sale to brewers, sugar devoted my attention especially to it. been manufactured to a considerable of Europe for thirty or forty years, it is only within a comparatively short time that it has found a market in the United States. Considered as a sugar, it is entirely different from that made from the sugar cane. It is natural then, that consumers should look with no little degree of suspicion upon this starch product called glucose, which is sometimes mixed with cane sugar, and which is also extensively used in the manufacture of syrups, honey, and confectionery.

Physiologically considered, glucose, pure and uncontaminated with other compounds, is certainly a good and wholesome food.

As the question is often asked whether artificial glucose contains injurious compounds arising from the chemicals used in its manufacture, or produced from the starch itself, I have taken pains to examine its mode of manufacture, and have also made chemical analyses of several different varieties.

The following table shows the percentage of starch in several vegetable products, according to Krockers's Analysis:

All efforts of the synthetical chemist to produce a substance having the properties of starch have proved unsuccessful; but he is enabled by chemical reagents to so act upon starch itself, that kindred products are obtained such as dextrine or starch gum, grape sugar or glucose. In 1811, Professor Kirchhoff, a Russian chemist, discovered that if starch paste be boiled for a certain time with a little sulphuric acid, a part of the starch is converted into starch sugar or glucose. From that time to the present, notably in Austria and Germany, the manufacture of glucose has been carried on with varied success. It is only within a few years, however, that this new branch of industry has developed to the enormous extent at present seen in the factories at Buffalo, Chicago, St.