TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF CHEMICAL I MVESTIGATION, lO/ 



and frequently the so-called " butter " consisted entirely of these 

 foreig:n fats. Then came a period during which supervision did 

 its effective work, and for many years an adulterated butter was 

 rare on the Cape market. The War "opened the flood-gates for 

 the import of tinned butters frQm abroad, and so brought about 

 a change from the satisfactory condition that had come about; 

 gradually it became no uncommon thing for butter to be found 

 preserved with boric acid and coloured by means of tropoeolin 

 dyes. In addition, the sale of other animal and vegetable fats 

 under the name of butter began to show signs of reviving. At 

 length it became increasingly diflicult to procure a pure butter 

 in Cape Town, and so the Agricultural Products Bill, intro- 

 duced in the interests of the farming community in general, 

 would have been of special value to the Cape dairy farmer, for 

 it was in butters imported from abroad that preservatives and 

 dye-stuffs were first noticed, and the practice of making such 

 additions to articles of local manufacture, when once it ob- 

 tained a firm foothold in the land, would soon become general 

 and difficult to eradicate.* Other undesirable practices have of 

 late also been detected by chemical analyses in the Cape Pro- 

 vince as having been introduced from oversea — for instance, the 

 process of renovating butter by melting out the fat from the 

 stale article and re-working it with milk or cream, subsequently 

 placing it on the market as " fresh .butter." Against all the 

 practices enumerated above and others the Bill made pro- 

 vision, on principles which had also been adopted by the United 

 States Department of Agriculture and by the Board of Agricul- 

 ture of Great Britain. What has been said about butter mav 

 be taken as having a corresponding application to cheese, that 

 commodity having been made from skim milk on the one hani 

 or by the use of lard, tallow and oils on the other, while even 

 margarine has frequently been found preserved with boric acid. 

 In jams, it was found, the use of cane sugar was being 

 superseded by glucose, which is the 'thick syrup obtained by 

 boiling starch with dilute sulphuric or other acid and evaporating 

 the piroduct obtained. The grain clauses in the Bill were in- 

 serted because of the practice of selling mixed flour or meal 

 without notification. In every one of its phases it will be ob- 

 served the proposed legislation had for its object the protection 

 of the South African producer, who could do without the props 

 of preservatives and sophistications, but was unable to make 

 headway against the imported articles which were so sustained 

 unless he too were allowed the undesirable and undesired privi- 

 ledge of sophisticating his produce. 



Cereals anu Other Fodders. 



More than twenty years ago i I carried on a short investi- 

 gation into the composition of Cape fodder plants, in the course 

 of which, struck by the small quantity of phosphates in a crop 



* See also Senior Analyst's Report for 1908, p. 107- 



t C- F. Jiiritz, " Colonial Fodder Plants and Woods," 1890, p. 27. 



