200 
ON DRUG GRINDING. 
completely saturated with water, purposely, I suppose, by some 
" financier" to increase the weight. When I opened it and saw 
the condition it was in, I called the attention of the owner to it, 
but he had unfortunately already paid for it. I dried it, and it 
lost over thirty-five per cent, in the drying alone. Now what a 
position would I have been in had I been restricted to a loss of 
two or three per cent. It would have taken a considerable quanti- 
ty of what Mr. Redwood facetiously calls " veritable powder of 
post" (saw-dust) to have made this matter straight. 
Twenty years back I attempted to unite to my other operations that 
of chipping and grinding dye woods, and ground in all from fifteen 
to twenty tons for different parties; and although the wood appear- 
ed to be dry, it lost over two hundred pounds on each ton, caused 
by evaporation on being cut into fine chips across the grain of the 
wood. Of course I received the usual amount of " rowing up" for 
making such losses ; so much so that I became heartily sick of the 
business, and sold out, at half the cost, the apparatus I had^erected. 
It is customary to remedy this difficulty, not with " powder of 
post," but " aqua font." Under the pretence that it improves the 
quality, water is freely used, not only to make good the loss, but 
a little further, and the consumer is made to pay a pretty high 
price for water. I have seen barrels of chipped wood that have laid 
some time in a store, fall short from fifteen to twenty pounds of 
the marked weight. I think it is a fraudulent and useless custom. 
If the article is really improved by the operation, (which I very 
much doubt,) there is plenty of water in every dye-house ; let the 
the consumer water it as much as he chooses, let the dealer sell 
him wood, not water, and charge accordingly, and let the chipper 
be a " hewer of wood," but have some compassion on him, and 
do not also make him a " drawer of water." 
The important article of opium comes to us in very different 
conditions. I believe it is the general custom of the druggists to 
keep this article in their cellars to prevent its drying and losing 
weight ; some, however, do not, particularly when it is intended 
to be powdered ; of course the loss in the former must necessarily 
be greater than in the latter instance, and it would be perfectly 
unreasonable, under such circumstances, to bind the powderer to a 
regular per centage of loss in powdering opium. I have been in- 
