=Brandy.=—Cognac brandy is naturally colorless, but public taste demands a brown color, which is imparted by a mixture of caramel (burned sugar). A very large proportion of the brandy in the world is made of corn-spirit colored with burned sugar and flavored with oil of cognac (an essential oil derived from the lees of wine; twenty-five hundred pounds of lees make one pound of oil.) Here is one recipe: “To every ten gallons of pure spirits add two quarts New England rum or one quart Jamaica rum, and from thirty to forty drops of oil of cognac cut in one half pint of alcohol; color with burned sugar.” Twenty-five samples examined: sixteen contained fusel-oil, six had traces of it, and three none. (Engelhardt). The only injurious ingredient (besides alcohol) in the artificial brandies seems to be the fusel-oil contained in the corn-spirit or whisky used as a base. Rub suspected brandy on the palm of the hand until it has evaporated. Fusel-oil may then still be detected by the smell. Good brandy will leave no odor. =Bread.=—Ten samples: no adulteration. (Love.) In 1873, Elwyn Waller, for the New York City Board of Health, examined fifty-one samples, of which forty-one were unadulterated, and ten contained traces of copper or alum. =Butter.=—May be mixed with oleomargarine, and the adulteration is hard to detect. Oleomargarine is more crumbly than butter in cold weather. Often colored with annotto, and, as this sometimes contains a little sulphate of copper, a trace of copper may occasionally be found in butter. As a rule, adulterations of butter are harmless. =Candy.=—“Taffy” and gum-drops are almost all glucose. Coloring-matters usually harmless, but of ten samples of yellow candy, seven contained chromate of lead. (W. H. Pitt,) Candy often contains terra alba, flour, and gum-arabic. The only injurious ingredients usually found are terra alba (recognized by its grittiness and insolubility) and the chromate of lead. On account of the latter it is best to avoid yellow, green, and orange candies. =Canned fruits= and =vegetables=.—Eighteen samples, including peaches, plums, grapes, strawberries, cherries, blackberries, olives, mushrooms, corn, beans, succotash, tomatoes, pumpkin, and peas. No adulteration found. Attention was given to the possibility of the chemical reaction of the fruit acids upon the inner surface of the cans, whereby salts of tin and lead might be produced, rendering the contents in some degree poisonous. There was no evidence of their presence. Some of the articles were canned over a year before. (S. A. Lattimore, Ph. D.) =Per contra=, other analysts have found from .1 to 2.3 grains of tin to the can. There is no evidence, however, that this amount of tin in solution is injurious, and the recent investigations of Hall seem to show that the fruit acids do not act appreciably on the tin or the lead of the solder, so long as the air is excluded. Cans once opened should therefore be emptied, and not left partly full.