28 
Reforms Suggested in the Mode of [January, 
That mistakes have been made by analysts is an un- 
doubted fadt ; the public generally must be even aware of it, 
for there has appeared not unfrequently in the public press 
an account of the proceedings taken in some court of law 
by traders who had been falsely accused of adulterating 
some article of food they vended, owing to the incorredt 
analysis of the chemist, the verdidt they gained establishing 
that they were honest and not dishonest traders, — a matter 
of no small importance, although life or death did not depend 
upon the issue. 
The analysis of milk is so comparatively simple that a 
properly trained analyst ought to make no mistake ; yet in 
this article of food, as in others, mistakes have been exposed 
in courts of law. The means the honest trader has of 
clearing his charadter against the dishonesty imputed to 
him by the errors of the analyst arises from the safeguard 
which was introduced into the Food Adulteration Adt. By 
one of the provisions in this Adt the party procuring a 
sample of food from the vendor, to have it analytically exa- 
mined in order to ascertain whether it is adulterated or not, 
must, after procuring it, inform the vendor for what objedt 
it has been procured, and the procurer must divide it into 
three separate samples, — one for the analyst who is em- 
ployed by the local authority who has diredted it to be 
procured ; another for the trader, who may send it to be 
examined to any analyst he may choose to seledt ; and the 
third is to be kept for submitting it to an analyst who is to 
adt as a kind of umpire in case the trader’s analyst — as- 
suming he has employed one — and the analyst seledted by 
the local authority do not agree in their analytical results. 
If it were not for this clause in the Adt honest traders 
would seldom have an opportunity of righting themselves 
in the eyes of the public against the aspersions cast upon 
them by the analyst. This excellent provision is no doubt 
not always availed of by those who consider they are inno- 
cent of the charges made against them ; sometimes, no 
doubt, owing to the poverty of the accused, at other times 
owing to their ignorance of the protedtion afforded them by 
the iaw ; yet it is, nevertheless, a valuable provision, as it 
offers protedtion to the innocent, and is a restraint upon in- 
competent and careless analysts. 
But in the still more serious charge of poisoning the 
accused have no such protedtion afforded them ; in fadt 
they have no means at all offered for defending themselves 
against the accusation, beyond the aid of a barrister in the 
law court ; hence should the analyst find poison when none 
