On F'aUltV RuM and its Alleged Cause. 5 
" faulty" rum in which the presence of the microbe had 
been demonstrated by Mr. Veley. This we submit, is 
strong presumptive proof that the ** faultiness" is not 
due to the action of the organism discovered by Mr. and 
Mrs, Veley. 
It is evident that, if the " faultiness" is due, as alleged, 
to the presence of a microbe, if it were removed from 
the rum, the spirit would no longer be faulty. We, there- 
fore, filtered ten samples of " faulty" rums from various 
sources through a sterilised Pasteur-Chamberland filter 
and tested the filtrates obtained for " faultiness." All 
were equally ** faulty" after as before filtration. This is 
strong evidence that the presence of the organism is not, 
at any rate in the case of the rums examined by us, the 
cause of the ** faultiness." 
If a '* faulty" rum after dilution is mixed with sufficient 
strong spirit to bring it back to its original strength the 
cloudiness disappears. This is exa6lly what would be 
expe6led to take place if the cloudiness were due to the 
presence in the spirit of resinous or other matters soluble 
in strong alcohol but less soluble in weaker spirit, We 
are aware that this fa6l has been explained by Mr. 
Veley as being due to the microbe having a similar index 
of refraction to that of spirit of 42 o.p. which is either a 
greater or a lesser one than that of the dilute spirit and 
hence the organism is invisible in the strong rum but be- 
comes visible in the weaker after dilution as a ** fluores- 
cence." The index of refra6lion of spirit of 42 o.p. is 
approximately 1.359, while that of the spirit after mix- 
ture with twice its bulk of water is, approximately, 
1*344. Whilst admiring the ingenuity of this explanation 
we were not satisfied that this small difference wvuld have 
