854 
Adulteration of Manures and Feeding Stuffs. 
a variety of proprietary articles and compounds sold as calf meal, 
milk food, lamb food, dairy cow meal, &c. 
The consumption of oil-cakes in the United Kingdom is esti- 
mated at 650,000 to 700,000 tons per annum. A large proportion 
of this quantity is made up of oil-cakes imported from abroad. 
The following are the imports of oil-cakes and oil seeds into the 
United Kingdom for the years named : — 
Imports of Oil-cakes. 
Year 
Quantity 
V alue 
tons 
£ 
1887 
264,849 
1,556,881 
1888 
257,748 
1,607,263 
1889 
255,918 
1,701,106 
1890 
282,616 
1,743,279 
1891 
270,671 
1,843,285 
Impoi'ts of Oil Seeds. 
Year 
Linseed 
Cotton-seed 
Rape-sec(l 
quarters 
tons 
quarters 
1887 
2,299,123 
275,627 
382,487 
1888 
2,533,640 
257,172 
277,727 
1889 
2,269,495 
277,394 
449,250 
1890 
1,933,165 
314,050 
230,647 
1891 
2,200,112 
350,437 
261,169 
The evidence shows that the trade in oil-cakes is a field in which 
the practice of adulteration is particularly prevalent, and that there 
is a large quantity of articles more or less impure or adulterated sold 
as genuine or pure products. 
The adulterants used in the manufacture of linseed cakes are 
known in the trade under the name of buffum. Under this most 
comprehensive term are included such substances as corn flour 
extract, saccharum meal, bran, rice-meal fannings, ground-nut cake, 
niger cake, ground and dried olive refuse, the husks of various kinds 
of grain, and cocoa-nut fibre. 
Poisonous seeds have occasionally been found in linseed cakes. 
Cattle have been killed, or injured, by croton seed and castor-oil 
seed in linseed cakes, or by eating cotton-seed cakes made from seed 
which had been imperfectly ginned or cleared of the lint adhering 
to it. 
Cakes of inferior quality, and what may, perhaps, be called im- 
pure cakes, are sold under the name of “ oil-cakes.” The Committee 
are convinced that to authorise in any way the use of the term “ oil- 
cake,” as descriptive of mixed cakes, would only facilitate fraud, 
because it has become a general habit among farmers to use this 
term as synonymous with “ linseed- cake.” It would be safer to use 
the term “ mixed,” but it would be most desirable that some definite 
