338 Quarterly Reports of the Chemical Committee, 1885. 
Mr. Martin in reply sent contract and invoice, from which it 
was found that 10 tons of pure linseed-cake had been contracted 
for at 9/. per ton, a portion of which has been already received. 
The vendors were the manufacturers, Messrs. Henry Leake and 
Son, of King's Lynn. 
In correspondence with Mr. Martin, Messrs. Leake and Son 
sent the following memorandum : — 
" Memo, from Henrv Leake and Son, Oil Cake Mills, King's Lvnn, 
" February 13th, 1885. 
■' Joseph Martin, Esq., Littleport. 
" Dear Sir, — We beg to return enclosed, and thank you for letting us see 
it. AVe don't see name of analyst, but from the wording we should judge it 
is not from Voelcker's office. 
" It is a curious thing as bearing upon the value of these analyses that we 
work at the lowest pressure on the cake of almost any mills in the country, 
and yet they return it as ' one of the hardest-pressed seen.' The fact being 
that there is the greatest difference in the constitution, and therefore in the 
working, of one sort of seed from the other ; of this the analysts seem quite 
ignorant, and they visit on our unlucky heads every divergence from a 
standard of their own ; and this is a remarkable instance of it. 
" Our general habit is to work North Russian seed, which yield a softer, 
darker, more albuminous cake ; but last year the North Russian seed croi> 
was a failure, and it is not to be got now, therefore we have to fall back upon 
the Indian seeds, which are poorer in albumen, and make a very light 
coloured cake, which it is usual to darken with Black Sea Rape-cake. You 
will find all English cake not so darkened, lighter in colour than usual this 
year, and you can generally detect the rape by the taste. 
" Now as bearing out what we say as to the unreliability of these analyses, 
we hand you copy of one made by Mr. Knight, Cambridge (who we rather 
think is the one who made your report). Now this cake was sent him in 
1881, and he reports it ' a genuine sample of linseed-cake, of about fair 
average quality.' 
" Now if you will compare the figures yours is the best of the two. The 
albumen is practically the same in both ; why then did he not report the 
other as short in that respect ? Mucilage, just as important and useful, is 
very much higher in yours, whilst the more useless parts, woody fibre and 
mineral matter, are much lower ! As for oil, our business is to extract the 
oil, which is medicinal but not feeding ; it would be well for us if we could 
reduce it to 6 per cent., as he says ; but there must have been something 
special about the piece of cake you sent (for they do vary), if it reajly only 
showed such a small proportion of oil ; we cannot work it down to that, nor 
anything like it on the average. 
" As to the starchy impurities, we can only account for such a report by 
the white colour of the cake when ground, arising, as we pointed out before, 
from the sort of seed used without rape. 
" We have some of our summer-made cakes from Archangel seed in stock ;. 
if you like to try them we are sure you will like them, but really we are 
using the other cake ourselves, and we find it a most useful cake ; the stores 
do remarkably well on it, and we are surprised how it put on the fat whea 
more was used, and we are sure that you will find no fault with tho 
results, which, after all, are worth more than all the analysts' reports in the 
world. 
" 1881. — Copy of analysis of llaseed-cake made by Henry Leake and Son, 
by Mr. Knight, Cambridge : — 
