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| ‘REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 95 
Phare of the tania of the session, and work in several directions was 
- initiated for the ad interim service of several committees. 
4 _ A further commission was for the investigation of the methods of 
national bureaus of statistics, and a collection of all available pub- 
.lished results of their work in Rome, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, The 
3 ‘Hague, Brussels, and London. The time occupied, ten weeks, though 
_too short, was sufficient for accumulation of much valuable informa- 
_ tion and large accessions to the official literature necessary for daily 
_ reference in the work of the division. 
DIVISION OF CHEMISTRY. 
_ The line of investigation undertaken by this division in food analy- 
__ sis and methods for the detection of food adulteration has been con- 
tinued and supplemented, and now includes the following classes: 
(a) Dairy products.—The investigations of the different constitu- 
ents of. milk and butter, and butter substitutes, have been continued, 
- and the results have been published in Bulletin No. 13, Part I. A 
new apparatus for the determination of fat in milk has been tested 
and found to be exceedingly efficient, permitting a larger number of 
analyses to be completed with equal accuracy in less time than by 
any other method. This instrument isthe lactocrite. It effects the 
separation by centrifugal force. From its simplicity and rapidity 
of manipulation it would form a valuable addition to the plant of 
- large dairy farms, where it is desirable to perform a large number of 
tests in a day. 
(b) Spices and condi ments.—The work mapped out during the past 
year for an exhaustive examination of this very largely adulterated 
class of foods has been brought to a close and embodied in Bulletin 
‘No. 13, Part IT. 
(c) Commercial fertilizers.—As in the preceding three years, the 
Association of Official Agricultural Chemists received the hospitalities 
of the Department of Agriculture, and their fourth annual conven- 
_ tion was held in the library of the Department during the past sum- 
mer. Theanalytical methods and details of manipulation adopted by 
this body for the analysis of commercial fertilizers and agricultural 
products have been published in Bulletin No. 16, and some of the ana- 
_ lytical experiments for verifying the methods adopted were per- 
formed by this division. 
(d) Fermented alcoholic beverages.—Pursuing the investigation of 
_ foods and food adulterants, the scope of examination was extended 
to wines, fermented and malt liquors, and ciders. The report con- 
taining the analytical data and their discussion is now in press and 
will shortly be issued as Bulletin No. 13, Part III. 
(e) Coffee, tea, and chocolate.—To ascertain the nature and extent 
of adulteration practiced in the preparation of the above-named arti- 
cles for the market, a large series of analyses has been commenced, 
, 
