114 



THE AMERICAN APICULTUBIST. 



bee papers see that a man is not 

 liable to grow rich by the bee bus- 

 iness here. You cannot, Mr. 

 Editor, more than 1 regret that 

 another drawback should be added 

 to the often precarious living of 

 the California beekeeper, b^^ the 

 false assertions of this " Grape 

 Sugar Co." 



I enclose a clipping from the 

 Pacific Rural Press, March 24, 

 1883, by which you will see that a 

 new sweetening compound has 

 been invented, and is going to be 

 used to adulterate glucose with. 

 Can you, or any of our scientific 

 beekeepers, tell us anything further 

 about this "benzoic sulphide?" 



Wm. Muth-Rasmussen. 

 Independence, Cal., July 19, 1883. 



The following is the new com- 

 pound for adulterating glucose, 

 mentioned by Mr Muth-Rasmus- 

 sen : 



A New Sweet Compound. — C. 

 Fahlberg, in a paper read before 

 the Franklin Institute, Jan. 17, 

 furnishes some interesting partic- 

 ulars in relation to his discovery 

 of a certain sweet compound in 

 the hydrocarbon of the coal tar 

 group. He describes the sweet- 

 ness as being very intense. As 

 soon as he made the discovery, he 

 proceeded at once to determine 

 whether it was poisonous to take 

 it in larger quantities or not. At 

 first a cat and then a dog were 

 subjected to experiment, but they 

 remaining alive and apparently not 

 in the slightest degree affected by 

 it, the discoverer decided to take 

 several grammes of it himself. 

 The result was not the slightest 

 inconvenience experienced from it. 

 A chemical test of the urine, made 

 the next morning, showed that 

 almost the entire quantity taken 

 could be thus recovered. 



The compound obtained, and 

 which contained the sweet princi- 



ple, forms salts with any carbonate 

 of the alkalies, alkaline, earths or 

 metals and all of which taste sweet. 

 It is, however, not an acid, but 

 belongs to a class of bodies to 

 which tiie name " Sulphines" has 

 been given ; the compound in ques- 

 tion being benzoic sulphide. It is 

 very readilj' soluble in alcohol, 

 more so than in cold water, in 

 which it only dissolves readily 

 when it is hot. The discoverer 

 says : " I am making the attempt 

 now to prepare it in larger quan- 

 tities, and by cheaper methods, and 

 have no doubt that it will find ex- 

 tensive use in medicine and for 

 technical purposes. One experi- 

 ment made was to sweeten glucose, 

 which, as you all know, tastes only 

 faintly sweet, and the result was a 

 complete success. As soon as I 

 shall have found the method by 

 which to prepare it on a manufac- 

 turing scale, I shall come before you 

 again, and as I trust and hope, 

 with larger samples than now, ready 

 to give answer to all questions in 

 regard to its price, application, 

 etc." 



This "benzoic sulphide" is new 

 to us, and, if its career is to be 

 anything like its twin-fraud — 

 glucose — it were better if it should 

 be consigned to eternal oblivion. 

 Am. Bee Journal. 



[We take great pleasure in wel- 

 coming to our pages such valuable 

 information regarding the use of 

 glucose in the adulteration of 

 honey. It seems as though one 

 of the leading questions of the day 

 was how to perpetrate the greatest 

 amount of fraud without being 

 detected. Almost every article of 

 food is adulterated, and now that 

 honey has become a staple article 

 of commerce, adulterators are con- 

 cocting every possible plan to 

 adulterate it, making it necessary 

 that all beekeepers, beekeepers' 



