656 Kidd V. Royal Agricultural Society of England. 
the best ordinary and purest linseed-cake, should we be driven to the ni( 
analyses of these chemists, who imder the microscope discover a few seeds ' 
dodder, or a few dozen specks of darnel, or other similar component parts ( 
substances like that '? If you are to solve this theory, or rather to get ovi 
this fact, that such a yield of oil, such flesh-forming and flesh-giving ii 
Sredients, were found in this material, is my friend to say that a 
that may be poisonous? Are not you to remember rather that th 
is the answer to my friend : that on the other hand these professors tell yo 
they cannot definitely, even to the fraction of a fraction, a decimal out of 
hundred, by any piroximate degree of arithmetical calculation, tell you wh; 
quantity of any of these things they discover ? Therefore, you come to tb 
extraordinary and enormous absurdity — that out of a large sample of the cat 
which is placed before the chemist, which he analyses and reduces to it 
comj)onents with his microscope, yet he is able only to discover' sue 
motes or grains as these, some article like millet, something like the husks t 
rice, something like dodder or darnel ; but he cannot tell you even proj 
imately what proportion all that bears to the whole ; and yet you hav 
all those vital ingredients found by the chemical analysis in that very cak( 
Do not you think then I am entitled to say that the solution of such a resui 
is, that you must place confidence in the truthfulness of what my clients te 
you, namely, that there was in that cake 50 |ier cent, of all but pure linseec 
which only wanted another screening to make it quite pure (for the evidenc 
is, that it was linseed twice screened, and therefore linseed which was onl 
not of the highest degree of pxuity, because it had not a final screening) 
50 per cent, of that, and added to it the other elements of which you hav 
heard, namely, sound good sesame-cake imported into this coimtry from goo 
makers, of a soimd and wholesome material, which in itself is au oil-givin 
and fattening product, and an article of commerce knowu widely on th 
Continent, being the result of the expressing of salad oil from seed for the u^ 
of man. I say if you find such an ingredient as that costing 6?. 10s. a toi 
and good wholesome bran costing bl. 15s. a ton ; if you find those tw 
elements added to the pure linseed, as upon the oath of Mr. Kidd^and th 
other witnesses who have been called before you they are, why then th 
chemical analysis does become important. Because in place of groping in th 
dark, and endeavouring to reconcile how this cake can be poisonous, or wha 
are the proportions of the poisonous ingredients of which fancy suggests it i 
composed, instead of having to deal with these microscopical calculations, th 
result of which cannot be approximated by any known arithmetical s\Tnbo 
you have the positive oath of a man, who produces his invoices, who produce 
his books, who refers to the dates when these ship-loads of materials arrived 
and solemnly here in a court of justice gives his evidence under those sanction 
which a man does who knows when he quotes the names of vessels, th 
deliveries of cargoes, and the transactions with large houses of business, tha 
he is stating that the refutation of which he could be confronted with to 
moiTow if he were not telling the truth — I say when you have from the lip 
of ISIr. Kidd, and Mr. Ayi-e, and their witnesses, proof of thfe 50 per cent o 
linseed, the 30 per cent, of sesam^, and the 20 per cent, of bran, and th 
evidence of the existence of materials known to chemical science as oil-giving 
mucilage-holding and albuminous compounds, are you to listen to my frieui 
when he asks you to disregard altogether the chemical analysis, simpl; 
because he w-ill not for one moment listen to the possibility of truth on on 
side, truth which, if you believe it, entirely supports and vindicates thi 
analyses of my friend's own witnesses, and accounts for the proportion, 
of the materials in the cake ol which you have beard ? So much for Un 
assistance wliich chemistry has rendered to our case. 
We now come to the help which the microscope has given us, What ha 
