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of the council-general of the Eastern Pyrenees, who was deputized by 
the council to present their complaint against the evil in question. M. 
Massot wishes to enforce the protest of a large number of chambers of 
commerce which have already been presented to the government. The 
wines of Italy and Spain have long been adulterated by an infusion of 
elderberries, and this fraud has gradually become common in the vini- 
cultural districts of France, to the serious injury of the legitimate pro- 
duction of the country. But this substance, though misleading wine- 
consumers and merchants as to the real character of the wines in 
market, is of little consequence in comparison with the virulent poisons 
which endanger the life and health of the consumer. Arsenical com- 
pounds of fachsin and grenat, a secondary product in manufacture of 
fuchsin, are now used extensively. The latter had no commercial value 
antil this process of wine-poisoning came into such extended use, bat 
now it sells at very remunerative prices. These ingredients are mingled 
with other matters, and their villainous character is concealed by very 
innocent specific names given to the compounds, such as colorine, cara- 
mel, &c. Few of these are sold that do not contain aniline, salts of 
rosaniline, or the residuary elements left by the production of fuchsin. 
M. Massot cites a statement published in the Anales @ Hygiene Publique 
for July, 1876, that in the single village of Odeillan a grocer of Nar- 
bonne sold ammoniacal cochineal to the extent of 10,000 frances ($2,000) 
annually, and that this was but one-third of what was known of the ex- 
‘ent of the trade in artificial coloring-matters in that village. A very 
large number of these preparations are very destructive of health. Even 
in wines colored with elderberries large infusions of alum and other 
drugs have been detecied. 
M. Massot states that the revenue-officers, judging wines only from 
appearance and taste, are incompetent to detect these frauds, and hence 
he calls for a legal chemical test for both foreign and native wines which 
shall ascertain the character and extent of these adulterations, and thus 
place the public on guard against injurious products. Numerous speci- 
mens of every brand of wine marketed should be subjected to analysis, 
and the vending of wines not conforming to these analytic tests should 
be treated as frauds on the public, for which severe penalties should be 
meted out to the perpetrators. M. Massot calls upon the municipal au- 
thorities of Paris to apply to adulterated wines the same principles of 
regulation which visit fine and imprisonment upon venders of tainted 
meats and vegetables. 
In the departinent of Herault, which is credited with a production of 
nearly 250,000,000 gallons of wine in 1875, the agitation of this question 
is becoming daily more earnest. The syndicate of wine-traders of the 
arrondissement of Beziers, at its reanion September 11, 1876, after citing 
the grave injuries inflicted by every process of artificial coloration upon 
the quality and reputation of French wines, and especially directing at- 
teation to the illicit trade in colorine, caramels, &c., resolved upon the 
constitution of asyndical commission specially charged with the analysis 
of specimens of wines marketed through the agency of the syndicate. 
This commission is to furnish, at the expense of the syndicate, analyses 
of every kind of wiue subjected to its inspection, and especially of those 
suspected of adulteration. The greatest publicity is to be given to its 
transactions, and every practicable measure looking to the suppression of 
the evilis to be energetically used. 
The syndicate of commerce of Cette, in a memorial to the minister of 
agriculture aud commerce, citing the repeated complaints of artificial 
coloration of southern wines by different syndicates in the south, as well 
