268 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



down upon them, in spite of all their burrowing; they are 

 gathered up and melted down. The filthiest of their asso- 

 ciated filth is thus removed, and then, and with a very little 

 farther preparation, they appear as cakes of dark-colored 

 hard fat, very well suited for lubricating machinery, and 

 indifferently fit for again becoming soap, and once more 

 repeating their former adventures. 



Those gentlemen of the British press whose brilliant 

 imagination supplies the public with their intersessional 

 harvests of sensational adulteration panics, have obtained a 

 fertile source of paragraphs by co-operating with the mud- 

 larks in the manufacture of butter from Thames umd. 



The origin of these stories is traceable to certain officers 

 of the Thames police, who, having on board some of these 

 gentlemen of the press engaged in hunting up information 

 respecting a body found in the river, supplied their guests 

 with a little supplementary chaff by showing them a mud- 

 lark's gatherings, and telling them that it was raw material 

 from which "tine Dorset" is produced. A communication 

 from " Our Special Correspondent" on the manufacture of 

 butter from Thames mud accordingly appeared in the atro- 

 city column on the following morning, and presently " went 

 the round of the papers." 



Although -it is perfectly possible by the aid of modern 

 chemical skill to refine even such filth as this, and to churn 

 it into a close resemblance to butter, the cost of doing so 

 would exceed the highest price obtainable for the finest 

 butter that comes to the London market. A skillful chem- 

 ist can convert all the cotton fibres that are associated with 

 this sewage fat into pure sugar or sugar-candy, but the 

 manufacture of sweetmeats from Thames mud would not 

 pay any better than the production of butter from the same 

 source, and for the same reason. 



Glutton-suet, chop-parings, and other clean, wholesome 

 fat can be bought wholesale for less than fivepence per 

 pound. It would cost above three times as much as this to 

 bring the fat nodules of the Thames mud to as near an 

 approach to butter as this sort of fat. Therefore the Thames 

 mud-butter material would be three times as costly as that 

 obtainable from the butcher. While the supply of mutton- 



