. LARD AND LARD ADULTERATIONS. 519 



process for extracting it he has described ; very likely it would vary that much in 

 lard made from different parts of the same hog ; he speaks on these points from his 

 own experiments ; he has not looked for authorities on this subject ; he is now per- 

 forming some experiments which he hopes will throw some light on this branch of 

 the subject. 



#*##*#* 



In testing for cotton-seed oil he extracted the olein by means of absolute alcohol, 

 heated, allowing the liquid to cool and then filtering and drying off the alcohol : he 

 takes a glass flask or anything capable of holding tie lard and pours over it some ab- 

 solute alcohol, and boils the two together fora few minutes, then allows the mixture 

 to cool ; this produces a crystallization ; and then having kept it cold for a number 

 of hours he filters it, and the liquid is for all practical purposes a solution of olein 

 and alcohol ; the alcohol is then driven off from it and what is left is olein. In the 

 case of these lard samples he treated the olein by the elaidiuc test, using as a liquid 

 sulphuric acid saturated with the red fumes of hyponi trie acid; by this treatment 

 the oleiu of oils is turned into a hard solid mass; olein is naturally a liquid, but 

 when the test is applied to cotton-seed oil the oil remains floating. The same test 

 applied to pure lard oil or pure olive oil soon turns the oil hard. If cotton-seed oil 

 and lard oil are mixed with this liquid the mixture will solidify only after a much 

 longer time than would be required to solidify pure lard oil, or often it will not so- 

 lidify at all, depending upon the proportion of the cotton-seed oil; he took a glass 

 test-tube and put into it a certain quantity of the olein to be tested, and the acid to 

 about half the bulk of the olein, shook it well, and kept the tube at a temperaturo 

 of about 10 degrees centigrade ; he observed the time it took for the liquor to solidify. 

 Nitric acid for use in the elaidine test is not reliable and he did not use it; he de- 

 pends upon the absence of solidification after half an hour to determine the basis of 

 reaction. Lard oil solidifies pretty quickly when treated by the acid he employed ; 

 cotton-seed oil does not for several hours. 



Hedoes not know of any writer who has stated that cotton-seed oil can not be de- 

 tected when it is present in less proportion than 5 to 10 per cent.; he has that informa- 

 tion from personal conversation Avith others. His method of analyzing lard is not one 

 published in the books, as far as he knows ; he adopts it mainly as the result of put- 

 ting this and that together. He is not willing to take ten samples of lard prepared 

 by a competent and reliable expert, whose certificate as to what they contain shall 

 be placed in the hands of the president of the Board of Trade and stake his reputation 

 on being able to tell which are adulterated and which pure, using in the analysis 

 the methods he has employed in testing the samples in respect to which he has been 

 testifying, because a mixture can be made with fats or some foreign oil which he 

 has not sufficiently studied to be able to certainly detect such substances ; his exami- 

 nations have been with reference to detecting substances which are most likely to 

 be used for the purpose of adulterations, such as tallow and some other substances. 

 In the case of a mixture of equal proportions of pure lard with a lard from which, 

 say, half of the lard oil has been expressed, leaving the mixture deficient in lard oil 

 to the extent of 25 per cent., that mixture would be found to contain more stearine 

 than pure lard. 



EVIDENCE OF WILLIAM HOSKINS.* 



CHICAGO, June 5, 1883. 



This certifies that I have analyzed a sample of lard received from Mr. C. H. S. Mixer, 

 marked No. 3, and find that it is adulterated with at least 20 per cent, of beef stea- 

 rine or its equivalent of tallow ; and further, I find evidences of the presence of cot- 

 tonseed oil, or one of its derivatives. 



G. A. MARINER. 

 Per HOSKINS. 



*Op. cit.,pp. 147, 143. 



