Report of Society's Meetings. 137 
sisted of compound ethers with water," and assume that 
this probability proves " the absence of any substance in 
the nature of turpene." To the majority of chemists the 
milkiness of the distillate would rather indicate the 
possibility of the presence of a terpene than prove its 
absence. We do not know of any compound ethers 
present in rum which could give rise to this milkiness. 
As a rule the milkiness of such distillates is due to the 
presence of higher fatty acids in minute traces in the 
rum, and is an occasional cause of faultiness in spirits, 
both uncoloured and coloured, in cases where the rum 
has inadvertently been contaminated with low produ6ls, 
or where from faulty fermentations larger portions than 
usual of these have been formed in the wash. 
On page 14 we find an instance of unpardonable mis- 
representation made apparently in order to discredit an 
experiment which we described, the results of which, in 
our opinion, are fatal to Mr. and Mrs. Veley's claim that 
their organism is the cause of the faultiness in rums. 
Our paragraph under consideration on page 414 of the 
Sugar Cane and on page 7 of Timehri commences " If 
instead of adding alcohol to the cloudy dilute ' faulty' 
rum it is allowed to stand, and the clear upper liquid 
poured oiT, the sediment may be colle6led, and will be 
lound to be very easily soluble in alcohol of from 40 to 
50 o.p.," and further describes how this experiment 
was made using about six litres of faulty rum. It was 
shown that the sediment obtained " dissolved or other- 
wise disappeared" in strong alcohol, passed through a 
Pasteur-Chamberlain filter, and then again became visible 
on dilution of the filtrate with water. This experiment 
the authors apparently considered had to be discredited 
if possible, as it supplied dire6l evidence of the incor- 
re6lness of their theory in the cases of the rums examined 
by us, and with this obje6l they have ignored the word 
" dilute" in the first sentence of the above quotation. 
On page 17 the authors state that '* for at least fifteen 
years — the wood used for puncheons^ vats, etc., has 
been constant." This is only true to a certain extent, 
the qualities of the wood, where of the same kind, vary 
very greatly with respe6t to age, mode of preparation, 
F 2 
