342 
Decoposition  of  Milk. 
/Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
i     July  1,1874 
The  oil  of  geranium  may  be  omitted,  or  substituted  by  other  essen- 
tial oils  at  discretion.    The  pills  should  be  made  as  hard  as  possible. 
Mr.  Whitfield  remarks  that  some  pills  take  the  coating  at  once,, 
others  not  so  readily.  In  the  latter  case  the  powder  should  be  sifted 
off,  and  the  varnish  applied  again  exactly  as  at  first.  A  second  coat 
seldom  fails,  and  it  increases  the  bulk  of  the  pills  but  slightly.  He 
is  of  the  opinion  that  there  can  be  no  objection  to  the  resinous  var- 
nish on  the  ground  of  insolubility,  as  he  finds  when  the  coated  pills- 
are  placed,  in  water  the  covering  cracks  and  exposes  the  pill  more 
rapidily  than  sugar  coating. 
Pills  containing  much  essential  oil  are  not  well  adapted  for  coating.. 
— Pharm.  Journ.  and  Trails.  [London],  May  30,  1874. 
THE  DECOMPOSITION  OF  MILK  BY  KEEPING. 
By  Edward  Lawrence  Cleaver. 
Assistant-Demonstrator  in  the  Laboratories  of  the  Pharmaceutical  Society. 
At  a  recent  prosecution  under  the  Adulteration  of  Food  Act,  it 
was  stated  in  the  evidence  for  the  defence  that  unless  milk  be  analyzed 
before  it  is  six  hours  old  the  results  are  not  reliable,  implying  that 
decomposition  proceeds  at  a  rate  sufficiently  rapid  to  destroy  a  large 
portion  of  the  solid  matter  after  that  period  of  time.  This  is  really 
a  most  important  point,  because  it  is  rarely  possible  to  analyze  sam- 
ples within  the  time  above  stated ;  with  the  object,  therefore,  of  gain- 
ing some  definite  information  on  this  subject,  I  made  a  series  of  ex- 
periments, the  results  of  which  are  stated  below. 
There  are  several  points  which  exercise  some  influence  on  the  de- 
composition of  milk,  namely : 
1st.  Temperature. 
2d.  Exposure  to  the  atmosphere. 
3d.  The  relative  poverty  or  richness  of  the  milk. 
The  present  note  only  gives  the  results  of  experiments  on  an  aver- 
age sample  of  milk  at  the  ordinary  temperature  ;  but  I  hope  at  some 
future  time  to  publish  a  series  showing  the  behavior  of  different 
samples  under  varying  conditions.  A  quantity  of  milk,  purchased 
early  in  the  morning,  was  divided  into  several  small  portions  and 
placed  in  bottles  which  were  tightly  corked.  One  portion  was, 
analyzed  immediately  after  purchase,  and  the  rest  from  time  to  time. 
The  results,  taken  at  a  temperature  of  70°  F.,  were  as  under  : 
