. LARD AND LARD ADULTERATIONS. 503 



reduce its market value below the point of profitable culture. This 

 has been done by the now nearly universal practice of adulterating or 

 diluting the olive oils of Mce and Provence with various seed oils, viz, 

 sesame, peanut, poppy-seed, camomile, and especially cottonseed, which 

 last, by reason of its cheapness, palatable flavor, and difficulty of de- 

 tection, has of recent years nearly supplanted all the others as an 

 adulterating material. The rank, low-priced olive oils from southern 

 Italy (Bari), Algeria, and Tunis have been brought here in vast quan- 

 tities, diluted with cotton or sesame, and been consumed and exported 

 wholesale in place of the fine, delicate, high-grade oils of the Var and 

 Bouches-du-Rhoue, which have thus been nearly elbowed out of the 

 market. This has so reduced the value of olive oil in southern France 

 that the Government has set itself seriously to the task of providing 

 a remedy. The first step was to discover some method of detecting 

 such adulterations which should be not only exact in its results but 

 sufficiently simple to be practicable for farmers, dealers, and ordinary 

 consumers. It was stated in a report which was made from this con- 

 sulate in February, 1888, that no such process was then known. As 

 late as May 17 last a meeting of the Scientific and Industrial Society of 

 Marseilles was addressed by Mr. Ernest Millian, an accomplished ana- 

 lytical chemist, who reviewed elaborately all of the known processes 

 and admitted that none of them were sufficiently delicate and exact to 

 detect an adulteration of less than 10 per cent. The " Cailletet" proc- 

 ess, which consists in treating the oil with a mixture of sulphuric and 

 nitric acids, had been hitherto generally employed, but this was de- 

 clared by Mr. Millian untrustworthy unless the degree of adulteration 

 exceeded 20 per cent. 



The "Bechi" process, now used by the Italian Government, will de- 

 tect an admixture of 15 per cent, of cottonseed oil, provided the sample 

 analyzed contains no glycerine, formic acid, or free fatty acids, any 

 one of which, even in minute quantity, is sufficient to mask the chemi- 

 cal reaction upon which the process of Signor Bechi depends. Mr. 

 Millian then described a new method, invented by himself, which con- 

 sists in treating with heat the saponified products of the oil in alcoholic 

 solution with nitrate of silver. This, however, is a process for the 

 laboratory of the accomplished chemist, and is not adapted to general 

 use. The same is true of the " Levallois " process, which has bee-a used 

 by experts in cases of real importance with more or less questionable 

 results, the analysis in one notable instance having given the same re- 

 sult from a sample of pure olive oil, and another which was known to 

 contain 20 per cent, of cotton-seed. 



Finally, as it would seem, the long sought for process has been dis- 

 covered by Mr. Brulle", chemist of the Agronomic Station at Nice. His 

 discovery was announced to the Academy of Sciences in April last, and 

 has been since subjected to an elaborate series of tests and experi- 

 ments by a commission specially appointed for the purpose by the Ag- 



