102 On cer lain fraudulent 



dark glass before your eye : which will be a great convenience 

 at all times, but particularly when the brightness of the sun is 

 liable to sudden changes from flying clouds." 



I shall merely add, that it is to be hoped the sovereigns of the 

 different provinces and states, mentioned in this memoir (p. 91), 

 will encourage persons from the neighbouring countries to enter 

 and objerve this eclipse : and that the love of science will in- 

 duce theni to prevent such persons from being subject to any 

 tarif, or vexatious delay at the Custom-house, on account of any 

 astronomical or philosophical instruments which they may take 

 with them for the purposes of observation. 



XIII. On certain fraudulent and poisonous Sophistications. 

 By Mr. Frbdrick Accum ''. 



B 



Counterfeit Pepper. 



LACK Pepper is the fruit of a shrubby creeping plant, which 

 grows wild in the East Indies, and is cultivated, with much ad- 

 vantage, for the sake of its berries, in Java and Malabar. The 

 berries are gathered before they are ripe, and are dried in the sun. 

 They become black and corrugated on the surface. 



That factitious pepper-corns have of late been detected mixed 

 with genuine pepper, is a fact sufficiently l<nown f. Such an 

 adulteration may prove, in many instances of household oeeonomy, 

 exceedingly vexatious and prejudicial to those who ignorantly 

 make use of the spurious article. I have examined large pack- 

 ages of both black and white pepper, by order of the Excise, and 

 have found them to contain about 16 per cent, of this artificial 

 compound. The spurious pepper is made up of oil cakes (the 

 residue of lintseed, from which the oil has been pressed), com- 

 mon clay, and a portion of Cayenne pepper, formed in a mass, 

 and granulated by being first passed through a sieve, and then 

 rolled in a cask. The mode of detecting the fraud is easy. It 

 is only necessary to throw a sample of the suspected pepper into 

 a bowl of water; the artificial pepper-corns fall to powder, whilst 

 the true pepper remains whole. 



Ground pepper is very often sophisticated bv adding to a por- 

 tion of genuine pepper, a quantity of pepper dust, or tlie sweep- 

 ings from the pepper warehouses, mixed with a little Cayeune 

 pepper. The sweepings are known, and purchased in the mar- 

 ket, under the name of P. D. signifying pepper dust. An in- 



• From Treatise on Adulterations of Food and on Culinary Poisons. 

 + Thomson's Annals of Chemistry, 1816; also Repository of Arts, vol.i. 

 1816, p. 11. 



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