Extracts from Report on the Analysis of Butter. 181 
almost on a level with the standard required by the University in the 
Previous Examination, and no member of the College can obtain a degree 
uutil he has fulfilled all the usual conditions of scholarship and residence. 
Nor will the College students form a class by themselves apart from the body 
of their fellow-Undergraduates. Experience has already shown that many 
young men of the ordinary age may be expected to enter the College : and the 
junior students will, long before they take their degrees, be equal in point of 
age to the mass of the members of the other Colleges. It may safely be 
assumed, therefore, that difference in years will not prove a barrier to free 
intercourse ; and the same may be asserted with equal confidence of difference 
in discipline* 
i(i * * * * * * 
T. J. Lawrence, Warden. 
VI. — Extracts from Copy of "a Report made to the Board of 
Inland Revenue by the Principal of the Chemical Laboratory, 
Somerset House, on Experiments conducted by him for the 
Analysis of Butter." By J. Bell. 
[Return to an Order of the Honourable the House of Commons, dated 
15th June, 1876.] 
One of the methods most recently suggested to analyse butter 
was to estimate the amount of fixed fatty acids which a butter 
would yield. This test, which was devised by Messrs. Angell 
and Hehner, and which is based upon the fact that genuine 
butter contains a less amount of these fixed acids than other 
animal or vegetable fats, was the nearest approach to the solution 
of the question which had been made. But their standard of 
purity, which was founded upon the analyses of a few samples 
obtained from one part of the country and about one time of the 
year, was looked upon with suspicion, and met with but little 
acceptance from analysts, so that the test for some time practi- 
callv fell into abeyance. 
It was found, however, that although the test was sound in 
principle, it involved a somewhat difficult chemical process in 
its application, and required a considerable amount of manipu- 
lative skill to carry it out. We therefore directed our attention 
to the devising of a more simple and more easily applied test, 
and in this, I think, we have succeeded. 
This method consists in the determination of the specific 
gravity of the butter fat in the liquid condition at 100° Fahr. 
We are not aware that this method had ever before been applied 
in the analysis of butter. It is true that there had been an 
endeavour to determine the specific gravity of some of the con- 
stituents of butter fat when in the solid condition, but no useful 
