784 
ANNUAL REPORT FOR 1892 OF THE 
CONSULTING CHEMIST. 
Tue total number of analyses made for members of the Society 
during the twelve months ending November 30, 1892, has been 1,211, 
that for the corresponding period of last year having been 1,358. 
Although fewer samples have been examined, I am able to say 
that there has been an improvement in their quality, and that the 
cases of adulteration which have had to be brought to the notice of 
the Chemical Committee have been less numerous than in the pre- 
ceding year. 
The sitting of the Departmental Committee, appointed by INIr. 
Chaplin, when President of the Board of Agriculture in the last 
Parliament, has probably exercised a beneficial influence, and the 
Committee’s Report will, it is hoped, do much good in securing to 
the agriculturist the purity of the feeding materials and manures 
which are supplied to him (see page 852). 
Whilst farmers have had bitter reason to complain of the low 
prices obtainable for stock and grain sold oft’ their farms, they have 
liad no cause of complaint with regard to the prices charged for the 
ordinaiy foods and manures used on the farm. 
The price of mineral superphosphate has been extraordinarily 
low throughout. Linseed-cake, from the first, experienced a gradual 
fall, and costs now (November, 1892) nearly U. per ton less than it 
did twelve months ago. 
The price of undecorticated cotton-cake has remained much the 
same all along, whilst the quality of decorticated cotton-cake has 
decidedly improved, and this valuable feeding material appears to 
be snapped up as quickly as it can be brought to the country. 
Improved machinery for drying brewers’ grains has been intro- 
duced lately, and this food is now being manufactured on a somewhat 
extensive scale. 
The quality of linseed-cakes is now, on the whole, very satisfac- 
tory, and the number of cases in which cakes sold under a guarantee 
of purity, but which liave proved to be inferior, has been but small. 
On tlie other hand, it may be truly said of those which are now 
obliged to be sold under the name “ oil-cake,” that they have been 
more than ever mixed with impurities. 
No particular new forms of adulteration have been brought to 
light during the year ; but several cases have occurred in which 
the presence of portions of the husk of castor-oil bean has been 
discovered in feeding materials. Apropos of this, T may mention a 
very useful method which was devised in the Laboratory of this 
Society by Dr. Leather, the late senior assistant, for the rapid 
separation and detection of this form of adulterant. Reference is 
made to the method in the Society’s Journal, 3rd series, vol. iii. 
Part iii. (September 30, 1892), page 597, and the method is described 
at length in The Analyst, vol. xvii. No. 195, July 1892, p. 121, 
