In general, the adulterations to which food is subjected may be divided into those positively deleterious to health (such as the colouring of confectionery by chrome yellow), those which are only fraudulent (such as the addition of flour to mustard), and those which may be fairly considered as accidental (such as the presence of a small amount of sand in tea). It would exceed the limits of this volume to enter into a comprehensive review of the almost endless varieties of adulteration. The following list embraces the articles most exposed to falsification, together with the adulterants commonly employed:-- Article. Common Adulterants. Baker’s chemicals Starch, alum. Bread and flour Other meals, alum. Butter Water, colouring matter, oleomargarine, and other fats. Canned foods Metallic poisons. Cheese Lard, oleomargarine, cotton-seed oil, metallic salts (in rind). Cocoa and chocolate Sugar, starch, flour. Coffee Chicory, peas, rye, corn, colouring matters. Confectionery Starch-sugar, starch, artificial essences, poisonous pigments, terra alba, plaster of Paris. Honey Glucose-syrup, cane sugar. Malt liquors Artificial glucose and bitters, sodium bicarbonate, salt. Milk Water, and removal of cream. Mustard Flour, turmeric, cayenne. Olive oil Cotton-seed and other oils. Pepper Various ground meals. Pickles Salts of copper. Spices Pepper-dust, starch, flour. Spirits Water, fusil oil, aromatic ethers, burnt sugar. Sugar Starch-sugar. Tea Exhausted tea leaves, foreign leaves, indigo, Prussian blue, gypsum, soap-stone, sand. Vinegar Water, sulphuric acid. Wine Water, spirits, coal tar and vegetable colours, factitious imitations. The above table includes those admixtures which have actually been detected by chemists of repute within the past few years, and omits many rather sensational forms of adulteration mentioned in the early treatises on the subject, the practice of which appears to have been discontinued. In the following pages, some of the more important articles of food and drink are described with especial reference to their chemical relations and the ordinary adulterations to which they are exposed. It should be added, that many of the methods of examination given are quoted in a condensed form from the more extensive works on food-analysis. FOOTNOTES: [1] ‘Foods: Composition and Analysis,’ pp. 1-18. [2] _The Tatler_, 1710. [3] ‘Analyst,’ 1880, p. 225. TEA.