489 
asin Paris, asks the minister to take such measures as will prevent the sale 
of adulterated wines. The Journal Officiel, noticing the repeated and in- 
creasing complaints from official bodies and private persons, states that 
all commissaries of police have been instructed to give their immedi- 
ate and close attention in this matter. When a brand.of wine is sus- 
pected of being adulterated, it is to be seized and subjected to analysis 
by the chemical commission of arts et métiers ; if it be found to have 
been tampered with it is to be poured into some brook or river, and the 
perpetrators of the fraud punished according to law. 
The syndicate of wine-merchants in Paris charge that the process of 
wine-coloration has created growing uneasiness ever since the vintage 
of 1845, when it suddenly grew to rather formidable proportions. Its in- 
fluence upon the quality, reputation, and prospects of French wine-pro- 
duction is declared to be.very injurious. The questions raised affect 
both public morals and public health. All tampering with the wine- 
product by adding elements abnormally changing its character, mis- 
representing its real condition, even when not affecting the health of 
the consumer, are clearly fraudulent, creating false impressions in 
regard to the value of the product. But some frauds are also destruc- 
tive of health. The ingredients used, such as arsenical fuchsine and 
rosaniline, are deadly poisons, as has been clearly demonstrated by 
scientific experiment. The syndicate do not object to strengthening 
weak wines with alcohol or sweetening sour wine with sugar. As this 
is but increasing the proportiun of some of the normal elements of the 
wine itself, itis not regarded as an objectionable adulteration. The 
syndicate ask the government, through the minister of commerce, for a 
law imposing penalties upon the adulteration itself and for the confis- 
cation and destruction of all artificially colored wines. In a discussion 
ef this proposition before the Political Economy Society of Paris, a 
member urged that the practice of coloring wines grew out of the 
heavy duties imposed upon wine-production since the war. These 
duties, he says, have so raised prices that cheaper kinds are used, yet 
consumers desire the articles set upon their tables to bear the appear- 
ance, at least, of the better brands. It is to meet this factitious demand 
that this miserable fraud is perpetrated. 
Moved by very numerous and earnest representations of this evil 
from different parts of the republic, the French executive government 
has taken cognizance of the question, and developed its line of action in 
a circular addressed by the minister of justice to the government law- 
officers in the different jurisdictions. The only coloration which is 
regarded as a falsification of wine, under existing laws, is that in which 
substances not legitimate elements of wine are used to modify it. That 
should be repressed, outside of any fraud committed by the vender. 
Even where the coloring-matter is not injurious to health, it is illegal 
and merchants keeping it are to be prosecuted. In case of coloration 
by injurious substances, the power of the magistrateis ample, and should 
be energetically exerted to repress the evil. Prosecutions had previously 
been ordered in some arrondissements as early as June, 1876, and all 
officers are exhorted to diligence in the work of repression. 
PROTECTION AGAINST THE PHYLLOXERA.—A recent number of the 
Comtes-Rendus states that M. Gachez, after long and patient research, 
has become convinced that rows of grape-vines with intercalary rows of 
red maize are completely shielded. from the ravages of the phylloxera, 
the insect abandoning the roots of the vine to prey upon the roots of 
the maize. M. Gachez tried this method upon vines, the roots of which, 
last spring, were covered with these insects. In September, the most 
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