166 TlMEHRI. 
One other result of advanced chemical skill has been 
the great amount of clever adulteration of which we in 
these later days are the victims 
" Humbug has now the snuggest of monopolies 
" Everything is anything but what it seems," 
as Charles Matthews used to sing. Our forefathers 
were comparatively honest men. Take butter for instance. 
What could be more innocent and unsophisticated ? The 
cows — the cowslips in the daisied meadow— the clear 
cool stream — the honest farmer and his comely wife — 
the natty dairy maid with dimpled hand — all were in 
olden days guarantees for the genuineness of butter, but 
now, thanks to Chemists, offal fat and scrapings from 
shambles and other impure sources yield what is or was 
sold as the real articles. Again Beer — (we recollect 
how any one who would rob a poor man of his beer, 
was denounced) — is not above suspicion, and there is 
now and then a cry that strychnine is substituted for 
hops, and that the light beers now in vogue are made 
with salicylic acid. In every manufacture, so some say, 
there is fraud and deception. If this is the case — if by 
chemists' skill these things are possible — by chemists' 
skill they can be detected — and when dete6led — ah ! 
well in bye-gone days the baker who adulterated his 
bread was nailed bv his ears to his door, but such ordi- 
nances have been repealed. 
The period under review has been also rich in the 
invention and progress of machinery and everything con- 
nected with metals. In this the mother country has, 
owing to her mineralogical wealth, taken the lead. 
Machinery has to a large extent imitated and super- 
seded that wonderful piece of natural mechanism — the 
