Great as the consumption of coffee is in Europe and the Americas, it has become so necessary in every household, that the demand continues to increase, and very full prices are maintained. The largely extended plantations in Brazil, in Ceylon, in India, in Java, and in other suitable localities, profitably opened up every day, altogether fail to keep down prices, and will long continue to offer the strong inducement of large profits! Taking advantage of this great public want, the unscrupulous and fraudulent trader foists upon the easily-duped masses of consumers vast quantities of unwholesome and pernicious stuff, mixed in certain proportions with coffee; and, although the law has interposed in the case of chicory, forbidding, under penalties, its being sold mixed with coffee, unless especially so labelled and declared, yet who can tell the thousand and one mixtures that are still made and sold with it? It may be said that all this can be prevented by purchasing only unground coffee, in a roasted state, ready for grinding; but there are those (to be reckoned by hundreds of thousands of families) who, having no means of grinding this roasted coffee, are compelled to buy that which is already ground, or go without altogether. What abominations do these (in too many cases) not drink, then, under the much abused name of _coffee_? These reflections are forced upon my mind every time I enter a coffee-house, and am called to put faith in the purity of the cup of coffee set before me. Visitors to the establishments of coffee-grinders speak of bags of the husks of peas, and cobs of Indian corn, wheat, sea-biscuits, and other articles, harmless enough in themselves, and in their right places, where, indeed, they may be useful; but a coffee-mill is the wrong place for these otherwise objectionable articles of consumption. It will not be denied that the husks of peas or the cobs of maize are appropriately placed in the trough from which our pigs feed; they will even add to the delicacy and whiteness of the pork those very useful animals are intended to yield us, but they are essentially out of place in our coffee-cup. These, and various other articles, go to make what in the trade is termed “Boston,” and this preparation the visitor, who has been admitted to the arcana of the grinder, will find mixed in a large bin ready for use. One who has been thus favoured, after describing the mill used for grinding the coffee, speaks of another machine, called the “mixer.” The “mixer” is a wooden cylinder revolving on a spindle at an angle of 45°, and having internal arrangements to mix the coffee with such proportion of adulterating material as the ingenuity or impudence of the grinder may suggest. Here, like Macbeth’s witches over their cauldron, presides the genius of the place, who casts in the ingredients which constitute the villanous compound, which, done up in tins, is finally ornamented with labels such as this: