"on brewing," by Childe and Maurice— three
pounds to ten quarters of malt; the giddiness
it excites passes for strength of liquor; and,
says Maurice, "it prevents a second fermentation
in bottled beer." The inky taste
perceptible in spurious " Guinness's," and other
beers, is caused by a mixture called beerheading,
which produces a mockery of the fine
cauliflower head, and is composed of salt,
alum, and green vitriol. Wholesome beer
can be brewed at prices charged even to
the humblest customers, and it is no sign
of worldly wisdom in a publican to retail
physic.

The discussion upon pure beer has put it in
our minds to wonder when pure bread will
again become an object of the consumer's
popular desire. There are some other things,
too, which need our attention. The British
consumer, in his early years, is partial to
confectionary. We have already called attention
to the drugging of the comfit markets, and
upon such matters we have more to say.

To begin with sweetmeats. British
confectionary contains plaster of Paris, chalk, starch,
sulphate of baryta, bronze, copper leaf, leaf
tin, arsenite of copper, carbonate of copper,
verdigris, chromate of lead, orpiment,
oxychloride of lead, red lead and vermillion
The minerals here named are all poisonous.
Our bright yellow comfits contain a dangerous
and insidious poison— chromate of lead, which
is used also largely for giving the slight yellow
tint to ginger lozenges. Let the British
consumer, who has often during the winter season
a ginger lozenge in her mouth, not be
surprised at a slight failing in her health. The
emerald green sugar-plums and ornaments
in sugar have been coloured with a still more
dangerous poison, arsenite of copper. These
mineral pills offered to the young population
of Great Britain do their work. Dr. Letheby
states that, to his knowledge, there have been
seventy cases of fatal poisoning during three
years traced to the use of confectionary made
and coloured in this country.

The use of poison in confectionary is
perfectly needless. There is no want of innocuous
colouring matter; and we do not care much if
the greens and yellows be a trifle less vivid to
the eye, if they are ten thousand times more
proper for the stomach. In France and
Belgium there is no poisonous confectionary made.
The most stringent law forbids not only the
use of mineral pigments, but forbids even the
wrapping of bonbons in paper that has been
glazed or coloured by means of a mineral or
hurtful compound. The seller of confectionary
is compelled also by law to let his name go
forth printed on some part of each parcel that
he issues— just as, in this country, the printer
has to sign his name to the productions of his
press— in order that he may be made
criminally responsible for any poison he may issue.
What must a Frenchman think of Greenwich
fair, where he may see sold with impunity on
every stall gingerbread baited with copper
leaf instead of gold; with tin instead of
silver!

Every now and then there comes a tale
within our experience of confectioners' men
poisoned by tasting one of the ingredients
they use—essential oil of bitter almonds.
This ratafia, employed extensively in flavouring
cakes, custards, and liqueurs— handled by
rough-handed, thoughtless men who are but ill
acquainted with its deadly nature— is a poison
six times stronger than the prussic acid of
the London Pharmacopœia. The pastry-cook
drops out into our cakes this deadly poison,
from a bottle in which it is contained in a
more concentrated form than is considered
safe, even by the College of Physicians, for
employment in prescriptions. And yet it is not
necessary for the flavour that a drop of
prussic acid should be put into our cakes and
custards. The prussic acid may be removed
from ratafia, and the whole flavour retained
in a harmless residue, by distillation, from
slaked lime and sulphate of iron.

Here, then, is a great evil in the way of
adulteration, capable of easy remedy, which
would have been remedied no doubt, ere
this, if the British consumer had bestowed
upon it half the eloquence expended on the
ridiculous alarm of strychnine in his bitter
beer.

If he be unwilling to lay bare a sweet tooth,
by betraying too great interest in comfits,
gingerbread, and custard, and have no children
to speak for, he may, at least, find it worth
while to exert himself for the procuring of
unadulterated bread.

Bread may contain potatoes, Indian meal,
bad flour, alum, chalk, blue vitriol, crushed
bones, magnesia, clay, and plaster of Paris;
the object of adulteration being to make the
loaf white and spongy, and to increase its
power of retaining water. A great portion
of the messes named in this list are not used
by any respectable baker, but the use of alum
is extensive. Alum whitens, and economises
by enabling the baker to sell in a loaf,
together with his flour, more than the proper
quantity of water. A sack of flour containing
two hundred and eighty pounds should make,
according to the old parliamentary standard,
eighty loaves of four pounds each. That is to
say, in the making of the bread, forty pounds
of water is the fair weight to be added to the
lack of flour. Bakers, however, like to make
more than eighty of these loaves out of a sack
of flour, and they get in practice ninety-four,
and sometimes even a hundred. That is to
say, instead of adding forty pounds of water
to the sack of flour, they will add ninety-six
pounds, or even a hundred and twenty pounds
of that exceedingly cheap article of trade.
Upon each sack of flour they obtain, therefore,
the price of bread for fifty, sixty, or
seventy pounds of water that has been
unfairly added to the reckoning. Simple flour
would not take up so much, but alum has
the power of retaining water, at the same