In the manufacture of malt liquors, a wide field is opened for the operations of fraud. The immense quantity of the article consumed, presents an irresistible temptation to the unprincipled dealer; while the vegetable substances with which beer is adulterated, are in all cases difficult to be detected, and are frequently beyond the reach of chemical analysis. There is, accordingly, no article which is the subject of such varied and extensive frauds. These are committed in the first instance by the brewer, during the process of manufacture, and afterwards by the dealer, who deteriorates, by fraudulent intermixtures, the liquor which he sells to the consumer. ‘The intoxicating qualities of porter (he continues) are to be ascribed to the various drugs intermixed with it;’ and, as some sorts of porter are more heady than others, the difference arises, according to this author, ‘from the greater or less quantity of stupifying ingredients’ contained in it. These consist of various substances, some of which are highly deleterious. Thus, the extract disguised under the name of _black extract_, and ostensibly destined for the use of tanners and dyers, is obtained by boiling the berries of the _cocculus indicus_ in water, and converting, by a subsequent evaporation, this decoction into a stiff black tenacious mass, possessing in a high degree the narcotic and intoxicating quality of the poisonous berry from which it is prepared. Quassia is another substance employed in place of hops, to give the beer a bitter taste; and the shavings of this wood are sold in a half torrified and ground state, in order to prevent its being recognised. Not only is the use of all these deleterious substances strictly prohibited to the brewer under severe penalties, but all druggists or grocers convicted of supplying him with any of them, or who have them in their possession, are liable to severe penalties; and Mr. Accum gives a list of twenty-nine convictions for this offence, from the year 1812 to 1819. From the year 1813 to 1819, the number of brewers prosecuted and convicted of using illegal ingredients in their breweries, amounts to thirty-four. Numerous seizures have also been made during the same period at various breweries, and in the warehouses of brewers’-druggists, of illegal ingredients, to be used in the brewing of beer, some of them highly deleterious.