OCTOBEB 22, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



569 



Dunham Jackson : " Resolution into involutory 

 substitutions of tlie transformations of a non- 

 singular bilinear form into itself." 



F. W. Reed ; " On singular points in the ap- 

 proximate development of the perturbative func- 

 tion." 



Also notes and errata for volumes 8-10, index 

 of the volume and indices by authors and by 

 subjects of volumes 1-10. 



The November number (Volume 16, num- 

 ber 2) of the Bulletin of the American Mathe- 

 matical Society contains : Report of the sum- 

 mer meeting of the society, by F. N. Cole; 

 " The groups which may be generated by 

 two operators Sj, s, satisfying the equation 

 (s,s,)a= (s„s,)/3, a and /3 being relatively 

 prime," by G. A. MiUer; "A note on imag- 

 inary intersections," by E. W. Davis; 

 " Maurolycus the first discoverer of the prin- 

 ciple of mathematical induction," by G. 

 Vacca ; " Darwin's scientific papers," by E. W. 

 Brown ; " Shorter notices " : Burkhardt's Ele- 

 mente der Differential- und Integralrech- 

 nungen, by L. "W. Dowling; Von Dantscher's 

 Weierstrassche Tlieorie der irrationalen Zalil- 

 en, by G. A. Miller; Andrews's Magic squares 

 and cubes, by G. A. Miller; d'Adhemar's 

 Exercices et Legons d'analyse, by Maxime 

 Bocher ; Heger's Analytische Geometrie auf 

 der Kugel, by L. W. Dowling; Borel-Staeckel's 

 Elemente der Mathematik, by Florian Cajori; 

 Love's Mathematical theory of elasticity, by 

 F. E. Sharpe ; Manville's Decouvertes modernes 

 en Physique, by E. B. Wilson ; " Notes " ; 

 " New publications." 



DELETERIOUS INGREDIENTS OF FOOD' 

 The Food and Drugs Act, June 30, 1906, 

 states that an article shall be deemed to be 

 adulterated, in the case of food, if it contain 

 any added poisonous or other added deleterious 

 ingredient which may rfender such article in- 

 jurious to health. The term food includes 

 " all articles used for food, drink, confection- 

 ery or condiment by man or animals, whether 

 simple, mixed or compound." The act does 

 not expressly prescribe what added substances 

 shall be deemed to be poisonous or deleterious, 



' Read before the Section of Biology, New York 

 Academy of Sciences, May 10, 1909. 



nor does it indicate by what properties they 

 are to be recognized. 



At first thought this omission may seem 

 trivial, and specific provision needless, in view 

 of the common knowledge of these matters. 

 More mature consideration, however, leads one 

 to realize that there is no strict definition by 

 which noxious and innocuous substances are 

 differentiated; and accordingly that the recog- 

 nition of poisonous and deleterious substances 

 is not altogether a simple matter. The situa- 

 tion is relieved somewhat by the fact that the 

 provision applies to added ingredients not 

 foods and not to food itself. 



Under the law, then, the question of poison- 

 ous or deleterious properties of anything com- 

 ing within what the law defines as a food need 

 not be considered. Nevertheless, in arriving 

 at standards of the deleterious properties of 

 added ingredients not foods themselves, it is 

 important to consider such properties of foods, 

 since, manifestly, it is not the intent of the 

 law to establish different standards of quality 

 of added ingredients than is possessed by food 

 itself. This is clearly indicated by the state- 

 ment of the law that food containing dele- 

 terious ingredients is to be deemed adulterated 

 because the added ingredient is of such poison- 

 ous or deleterious quality as may, by its pres- 

 ence, render the food injurious to health. 

 Hence, if the added ingredient is only capable 

 of becoming deleterious in the sense that food 

 itself is, its addition to food will not render 

 such food injurious to health in the meaning 

 and intent of the law. To illustrate, the addi- 

 tion of spices to food is admitted under the 

 law, because they are foods in the condimental 

 sense. Nevertheless, they are capable of being 

 distinctly deleterious if ingested too liberally, 

 or, in some conditions of disease, if ingested 

 in even the ordinary quantity; that is, their 

 proper use is without deleterious effect, yet 

 they may become injurious by abuse. In the 

 same way, if an added ingredient is not essen- 

 tially poisonous, but merely capable of becom- 

 ing deleterious by abuse, it is not a poisonous 

 or deleterious substance in the meaning and 

 intent of the law. 



It must not be supposed that this interpre- 

 tation admits of the addition to food of essen- 



