1884.1 
The Health Exhibition. 
351 
But in this same food department there was also much 
neither novel nor instructive, and which can only be regarded 
in the light of an advertisement. Piles of tins of condensed 
milk, of Australian meat, and of preserved vegetables can 
be seen in many shop-windows. “Animals from the Lon- 
don markets,” stuffed, convey also little instruction. In one 
display of this kind, belonging to a taxidermist, — or, as our 
friend Mr. S. Butler would say, to a “ man who seasons the 
skins of owls,” — there were actually a huge stuffed dog and 
a puppy. This display may perchance lead foreigners to 
believe that John Bull, like John Chinaman, regales himself 
upon “ stewed bow-wow,” or that the youth of the “ period” 
indulge in cannibal repasts of puppy-pie. New sources of 
food do not form a prominent feature, human ingenuity 
having perhaps already tried everything available. 
Adulterants, substitutes — or, as our German neighbours 
facetiously call them, “ surrogates ” — for various kinds of 
food, were not wanting. Thus we saw, on the stall of a 
Dutch exhibitor, the word, and the thing, of ill omen, 
“ margarine boter,” and the question rose to our minds 
whether this sample and the bulk which it represents had 
undergone any treatment certain to destroy microbia. 
Along with coffee there was its simulacrum chicory, 
which, in spite of Viscount Halifax and Mr. Gladstone, we 
must persist in regarding as an adulteration. Why is not 
tea, in like manner, exhibited and sold as “ mixed with a 
portion ” — modest word ! — of the purest slow-leaf ? There 
was a stall of preserved fruits manufactured in Gloucester- 
shire under improved auspices. The fruit goes direct from 
the orchards to steam-jacketted pans, and receives no ad- 
mixture save the finest lump-sugar. Whilst giving our 
tribute of applause to the nobleman who in this manner 
finds employment for a number of persons, and a remunera- 
tive use for some hundred acres of land which might other- 
wise revert to the barbarism of “ permanent pasture,” we 
should like to ask whether the sugar used is real saccharose 
or only “ betose ” ? An exhibit showing the physical differ- 
ences between these isomeric bodies would have formed an 
interesting feature. 
In what are commonly called sanitary inventions the 
Exhibition is fairly rich. There are devices for preventing 
the scullery-sink from being blocked up with congealed fat. 
There are effluvia- traps and soil-pipes of various kinds. 
But we fear that no syphon, however constructed, can pre- 
vent the sewer-gases from interchanging through the water 
with the air of the house. There is an apparatus which is 
