Though there are many tests in use for the discovery of the presence of mineral poisons, such as litharge and other preparations of lead, or pungent vegetable nostrums, namely extract of capsicums, &c. in wines and spirits, yet it must be admitted that there are no efficient tests for detecting the presence of the foreign agents above mentioned in either wines or spirits, except by chemical analysis; because, in the fraudulent combination which takes place, those articles bear the largest proportions which possess the same chemical properties as do the wines and spirits with which they are compounded. The injurious tendency of the vegetable poisons which form a component part of the spurious compositions which are vended under the denomination of cheap wines and spirits, and their injurious and lingering effects are so imperceptible on the human constitution, that, as the author of “The Oracle of Health and Long Life” observes, they must be deadly indeed to produce immediate injury, so as to give suspicion of their presence. The presence of sugar of lead, or any other deleterious metal in wine, may be detected by filling a glass with wine, and adding a few drops of Harrowgate-water, or melted brimstone, when the wine will with the last mentioned ingredient becomes blackish, and with the other it will immediately produce a black sediment; but if it be unadulterated it will only lose its clearness, taste, and colour. Or the adulteration may be discovered by adding one part of water saturated with sulphuretted hydrogen gas, acidulated with a small portion of muriatic acid, to two parts of wine, or any other liquid, in which the presence of lead is suspected, when a blackish coloured precipitate will settle at the bottom of the vessel, which, being dried and fused by means of the blow-pipe, will yield a globule of metallic lead. The prussiate of potash is occasionally employed for the same purpose: a drop or two being sufficient to show a white or greyish precipitate in any fluid in which lead is contained. When white wines have an unusual degree of sweetness, are of a darker colour than their age and body seem to warrant, and particularly when their use, or that of the red wines, is followed by pains in the stomach, it may be concluded that they have been adulterated with lead.