CHAPTEE II. 



INSTRUMENTS AND METHODS FOR TESTING MILK OUTLINE 



OF MILK-ANALYSIS. 



THE lactometer, or lactodensimeter, as it has been called, to 

 distinguish it from another simple instrument, the cream- 

 ometer, was at one time a great favorite. In France, a few 

 years ago, if not indeed now, the police would take action 

 at once on a reading of that instrument, and turn milk out 

 into the gutter if it were condemned. And in London, the 

 lactometer is exposed for sale in shop windows, and both the 

 public and milk dealers trust to it. Even in some recent 

 manuals intended for the guidance of medical officers of 

 health, the use of the lactometer is recommended. In one 

 of them in particular Dr. Edward Smith's which claims a 

 sort of pseudo-government sanction, the lactometer is very 

 prominently put forward, and commended as being for milk 

 what the hydrometer is for alcoholic fluids. 



But, although it is so very popular, and although it has 

 been so implicitly trusted, the lactometer is a most untrust- 

 worthy instrument. There hardly ever was an instrument 

 which has so utterly failed as the lactometer. It confounds 

 together milk which is exceptionally rich with milk which 

 has been largely watered ; and many a poor French peasant, 

 bringing the best and unadulterated produce of his dairy into 

 a French town, has been ruthlessly stopped by the police, who 

 have dipped their lactometer into the milk, and forthwith 

 sent it down the gutter, as if it had been milk and water. 



