1841.] On the Salts, called Puckwah and Phool-Kharee. 943 



E, Unless you want to know exactly the total amount of adulter- 

 ation, which is rarely the case, you need only first drop in, say the 

 5 per cent, allowed by the Board, and after that 5 or 10 more. If it 

 shews this, it is quite adulteration enough to prove that the salt has 

 been purposely falsified, and there is no use in wasting your time and 

 test liquor farther. 



III. — Chemical demonstration of the certainty of this method. 



1. It has been shewn that there are no Carbonates in the Kharee ; and 

 the proportion of Sulphate of Magnesia is so small in good salt,* that 

 for practical purposes, it may be neglected or allowed for. The Sul- 

 phate of Lime may also for practice be considered as wholly insoluble 

 in cold water. 



2. We have thus only to deal with the fraudulent admixture of the 

 anhydrous Sulphate of Soda, and perhaps at times with a little Sul- 

 phate of Potass. The problem is therefore, really, reduced to the simple 

 one of ascertaining the quantity of Sulphuric Acid in a given quantity 

 of salt. We may always assume that the base is Soda. The working 

 fact for revenue purposes is, that no Sulphuric Acid [which in saline 

 compounds form the Sulphates] can be present in good salt beyond 

 the per centage which we allow at page 942 without having been put 

 there for fraudulent ends ; and in the state of Sulphate of Soda, because 

 there is no other Sulphate available for so doing in the country. 



3. We may take our specimen, containing 80 per cent, of the dry 

 Sulphate of Soda, to be the strongest average salt used for adulteration. 

 If a weaker sort, that is a Kharee containing more extraneous salts be 

 used, more of it will be put into the parcel of salt to be adulterated. 



4. If we take 100 parts of good salt to be adulterated with 25 per 

 cent, of Kharee, it is clear that in this quantity there is I of the 80 

 parts [or 20 parts] of the dry Sulphate of Soda which our analysis 

 shews ; the remaining 5 parts being made up by the extraneous salts. 



* It is only 0.45 in bazar salt by Dr. McClelland's recent paper. By 

 my analysis of Madras salt and Cuttack Pungah. salt made several years ago, it 

 was 2.04 for the first, and 5.45 for the last, the mean of these would be 3.7 per 

 cent. Mine was I think very fresh salt, taken from the heaps. As befoi'e noted, 

 trials should be made before fixing a standard allowance. 



