I shall divide this interesting portion of my work into two sections; first, the Adulteration of Wines and Spirits, and the Tricks of Wine and Spirit Dealers; and, secondly, the Tests or Methods of ascertaining the Good and Bad Qualities of Wines and Spirits. SECTION I.—_The Adulteration of Wines and Spirits, and the Tricks of Wine and Spirit Dealers._ 1. WINES. The frauds and malpractices in use among the wine and spirit brewers and compounders of the metropolis, and the noxious and deleterious ingredients with which those unprincipled men “make up” the poisonous compounds, that they are daily vending to the public, under the names of wines and spirits, exceed the devices, and are, if possible, of a more deadly operation than the sophistications and vitiated manufactures palmed upon the public by the wicked and avaricious cozeners of all other adulterating trades. The art or mystery of manufacturing spurious and counterfeit wines and liquors forms a regular trade of great extent in this metropolis, and is carried on with so much skill and ingenuity, and has attained so great perfection, as to render the irony of the witty author of the Tatler no longer figurative; namely, that “the transmutation of liquors under the streets of London was so perfect, that the operators by the power of magical drugs could convert a plantation of northern hedges into a vineyard; could raise the choicest products of the hills and valleys of France under the streets of London; could squeeze Bourdeaux out of the sloe, and Champagne from the apple.” Nor has the reprobation of the contaminations of wines and spirits with substances deleterious to health been confined to former times; they have been stigmatised on account of their alarming and deadly increase in numerous recent publications. I quote the following artless lines, in which an honest country lad is represented as expressing his abhorrence of his relative, a London wine-merchant’s sophistications, not for the elegance of the poetry, but as conveying an important truth in a plain garb; perhaps its unaffected satire is not ill adapted to awaken attention: “So I buss’d Luke and mother, and, vastly concern’d, Off I set, with my father’s kind blessing, To our cousin, the wine merchant, where I soon learn’d About mixing, and brewing, and pressing; But the sloe-juice and rat’s bane, and all that fine joke, Was soon in my stomach a-rising, Why, dang it! cried I, would you kill the poor folk? I thought you sold wine, and not poison!”