PURE AND IMPURE FOODS. 



3" 



balls of an almost alarming strength and co- 

 hesiveness. Then a long wooden stick, with 

 a round flat piece of wood at its end, was 

 produced, and on this she flattened each 

 ball, turning with one hand, shaping with 

 the other. Having cleared the lighted 

 wood ash from 2 spots in the long white 

 fire hole, she shook a bannock carefully 

 from the spud-shaped spade to bake, and, 

 using a small wood rake to gather it, drew 

 the still glowing wood ash around their 

 edges. 



'My whole soul swelled with the poetry of 

 this process, the manner of it, the girl's di- 

 rect way, the ingredients, the tools, the deli- 

 cate rose-grey flakes of the wood ash ; all 

 seemed epic to me, and as I sat watching 

 the steam drying off those ideally real ban- 

 nocks as the heat stole into them, I hardly 

 dared to breathe. 



"As they stood cooling, after they were 

 cooked, browned, dry of skin, white dusty, 

 or a trifle blackened where the ash had been 

 too ardent, I looked at them and wondered 

 that they made so little impression on the 

 painter and the rest. 



"Finally, when the bowl of milk was 

 brought in, and the kolesha (maize por- 

 ridge) was ready, they bade me break a bit 

 off one of those elemental bannocks. . . 



"Food so prepared from such material 

 should have had a finer taste ! If it had 

 been cold, perhaps ! Or it may have been 

 the onions that were amiss ; yet I like 

 onions. It was perplexing. There was no 

 handy solution of the fact, yet the bannock 

 was not nice. 



"My bitter sorrow! I tried a second bit; 

 but no, I could not eat it." 



ARTIFICIAL COLORING MATTER IN 



CANNED FRUITS. 

 Artificial colors are frequently added to 

 foods to improve their appearance or con- 

 ceal their inferiority. In the food and 

 drug laboratory of the Massachusetts State 

 Board of Health is a varied collection of 

 strips of nun's veiling or albatross cloth, 

 originally white, which have been dyed in 

 a variety of fast colors by being boiled in 

 solutions of various food products com- 

 monly found on the market. A similar 

 collection has been prepared by the Bureau 

 of Chemistry of the U. S. Department of 

 Agriculture. These collections illustrate, 

 in a striking manner, the extent to 

 which jellies, jams, catsups, fruit syr- 

 ups, and cordials, especially the cheaper 

 varieties, are colored. Some of the sam- 

 ples were dyed various shades of red, pink 

 and orange from preserved fruits and cat- 

 sups. A deep yellow was obtained from 

 lime juice, and a brilliant green from 

 creme de menthe. The latter was com- 

 pletely decolorized by being boiled with the 

 woolen cloth a few minutes. In most cases 



these artificial dyes were aniline col- 

 ors which may be identified by the action 

 of various reagents on the dyed fiber. Tro- 

 pseolin has been identified in lemon extract, 

 Bismarck brown in canned apricots, pine- 

 apples, etc., azo-eosin in raspberry and 

 strawberry preserve, and so on. 



The method of determining the presence 

 of coal-tar dye in jellies and similar prod- 

 ucts is given in a recent report of the Mas- 

 sachusetts State Board of Health. A good 

 quality of worsted or white woolen cloth 

 should be selected, taking care that the 

 color is pure white and not the more com- 

 mon yellow-white. Nun's veiling has been 

 found admirable. It should be freed from 

 any trace of grease by being boiled first in 

 a dilute soda solution and finally in water. 



One authority recommends boiling the 

 cleaned woolen goods in a dilute solution 

 Of the jelly, canned fruit or other material, 

 to which potassium bi-sulphate has been 

 added. After removing the cloth from the 

 solution, boil it in water and dry it. The 

 natural colors from fruit will make little 

 impression on the wool under this treat- 

 ment, the cloth being usually colored only 

 a slight muddy or brownish hue. The azo- 

 aniline colors, usually quite brilliant, are so 

 firmly fixed on the wool that no amount of 

 boiling or soaping will remove them. Tables 

 of classified colors are given in various 

 text books for the identification of the 

 particular dyes by means of treatment of 

 the dyed wool with various reagents, such 

 as concentrated acids and alkalies. 



VIRTUES OF THE PINEAPPLE. 



According to the Lancet, "partaking of 

 a slice of pineapple after a meal is quite 

 in accordance with physiological indica- 

 tions, since, though it may not be generally 

 known, fresh pineapple juice contains a re- 

 markably active digestive principle similar 

 to pepsin. This principle has been termed 

 "bromelin," and so powerful is its action 

 on proteids that it will digest as much 

 as 1,000 times its weight within a few hours. 

 Its digestive activity varies in accordance 

 with the kind of proteid to which it is 

 subjected. Fibrin disappears entirely after 

 a time. With the coagulated albumen of 

 eggs the digestive process is slow, while 

 with the albumen of meat its action seems 

 first to produce a pulpy gelatinous mass, 

 which, however, completely dissolves after 

 a short time. When a slice of fresh pine- 

 apple is placed on a raw beefsteak the sur- 

 face of the steak becomes gradually gela- 

 tinous, owing to the digestive action of the 

 enzyme of the juice. 



"Of course, it is well known that digest- 

 ive agents exist also in other fruits, but 

 when it is considered that a pineapple of 

 average size will yield nearly 2 pints of 

 juice, it will be seen that the digestive ac- 



