211 
spices and all kinds of genuine vegetable foods, and the buying public 
sometimes gets so accustomed to the rubbish that they think there is 
no better to be had, and end sometimes by preferring the refuse to the 
true substance. This, of course, must eliminate from the producer a 
large portion of his market. It is true that there are adulteration 
laws carried out more or less, but these are certainly not efficiently 
enough carried out so as to defend the producer against the rogue. 
At a meeting of the Society of Public Analysis, Messrs. Umney 
and Bennett read a paper on the valuation of certain spices used in 
veterinary medicine, curry powder, so there are no means of catching 
the vendors of adulterated or imitation curry stuffs. 
In all these adulterations and fraud the producer suffers from 
the loss of a market and the reduction in value of good* sound produce, 
and it is to his interest that such swindling should be suppressed 
rigorously. 
Many years ago when coffee was the standard crop of the Malay 
Peninsula, the editor urged the planters to combine to employ an 
analyst at home to pursue and carry the dealers in faked coffee, an 
enormous trade, and to push at the same time the sound genuine cof- 
fee of the Malay Peninsula. The cost would have been trivial com- 
pared with the profits in the increased sale. Everyone knows the 
horrible liquid served as coffee at many railway stations and restaur- 
ants, and there is also the decoction sold in vast quantities to the 
“ working man ” in the morning as coffee, before he starts to work. 
There does not seem to be the slightest check on what can be sold in 
these big businesses, the furnishing of which is quite lost to the coffee 
* planter. 
Large quantities of spices are used in cattle medicine or cattle 
foods, and apparently the adulteration acts were not framed to 
cover these manufactures. 
Two forms of adulterations seem to be popular, one is simply 
to add sand or warehouse sweepings or anything else that was not 
wasted by anybody and could be mixed with powdered spice so as to 
be difficult to see. In a sample of gentian it was difficult to find the 
gentian among the six other ingredients which included Bean flour, 
quassia and starch. Ground pepper used to be adulterated with ground 
olive stone and dirt. 
Another method is to use the spice twice over, “ one firm alone 
drew the oil from 250,000 pounds of cloves per year, distilling when 
half or two-thirds of the oil had been yielded, the residue being dried 
and put into circulation, going chiefly to France and Russia. Cumin 
and other spices of this type are also used for the extraction of the 
oil, and the valueless refuse sold to make curry powder and condi- 
ments. Spices as a rule, says Mr. Parry in the discussion on the 
paper, are not as a rule sold as such, they are shipped to India and 
come back as curry powder. 
{To be continued.) 
