FOODS AND DRUGS AND THEIR ADULTERANTS. 71 
on by the State Board of Health of Massachusetts; 
and the annual reports of that board furnish valu- 
able data as to the actual condition of commercial 
substances. Spices, coffee, and cocoa are the most 
important foods for which the microscopical analy- 
sis is found available; while chocolate, tea, tobacco, all- 
spice, cassia, pepper, cayenne, paprika, cloves, ginger, 
mustard, nutmeg, vanilla, cardamom, and numerous other 
materials may be examined to advantage. Cocoa fre- 
quently contains foreign cereals, starch, or sugar; cof- 
fee is adulterated with pea-hulls, peas, chicory, wheat, 
and charcoal. On the other hand, in some of the foods 
advertised as substitutes for coffee a considerable admix- 
ture of coffee may be found. Tea, cloves, pepper, and 
mustard are most frequently adulterated with refuse por- 
tions of the plant in question—tea-stems, clove-stems, 
pepper-shells, and mustard-hulls respectively. Occa- 
sionally very bad samples of cloves occur with a large 
proportion of wheat, turmeric, and charcoal; of mustard, 
nine-tenths wheat and turmeric; of pepper, one-third 
olive-stones. 
It would be unprofitable, even if it were possible, for 
the student to attempt to cover the whole field of micro- 
scopical analysis, since the detailed information involved 
can best be acquired in practice when it is needed. 
We shall therefore take up only three of the most im- 
portant substances, coffee, mustard, and pepper, with 
their commonest adulterants, as types of the rest, and as 
illustrating the sort of characteristics by which vegetable 
food substances are identified. 
