With respect to the manufacture of malt liquors, especially porter, it is wholly under the jurisdiction of the excise, and yet there is no article of diet which has so universally the credit of being adulterated, and that too with drugs of the most noxious quality; we have now lying before us “_Minutes taken_ (in Session 1818) _before the Committee of the House of Commons, to whom the petition of several inhabitants of London and its vicinity, complaining of the high price and inferior quality of_ BEER, _was referred, to examine the matter thereof and report the same, with their observations thereupon, to the house_.” _Ordered_, by the House of Commons, _to be printed_, 8 April, 1819. From this it very clearly appears that the illegal addition of various drugs is commonly practised in the breweries; but we are nevertheless inclined to believe that the more extensive and serious frauds of this description, are not carried on in the cauldrons of the brewer, but in the barrels of the publican.[580] The adulteration of milk has furnished another object of popular clamour, but we are inclined to believe that its dilution with water is the only fraud ever committed with respect to it. _Chalk_, if added, would be so easily detected, and would answer the intended purpose so clumsily, that we may very safely consider such a charge against the London milk-venders as entirely groundless. In order to assay the quality of milk several different instruments have been proposed; _Mr. Dicas_, mathematical instrument maker in Liverpool, invented for this purpose an instrument which he termed a _lactometer_, and which ascertains the richness of milk from its specific gravity compared with water. _Mr. Edmund Davy_, of Cork, has lately made a very interesting application of the hydrometer,[581] to ascertain the quality of skimmed milk; it appears that in Ireland, especially in its southern districts, skimmed milk forms an indispensable part of the subsistence of the lower orders, and it is stated that the sale of this article in the markets of Cork alone amounts to a thousand pounds per week; the necessity therefore of securing the public against the fraudulent adulteration of so important an article of diet, requires no comment; and it appears that a large proportion exposed for sale had been greatly diluted with water; and that for want of the means of detection, the fraud had been long practised with impunity, not only in Cork, but also in other parts of the country; an unsuccessful attempt had indeed been made to remedy the evil by the appointment of persons called _tasters_, who were empowered to inspect the milk-markets in Cork, and to detain such milk as they considered adulterated; the total incompetency however of these officers was soon discovered, and a committee of respectable farmers was formed, to devise, if possible, some means to prevent the commission of so serious a fraud; on this occasion _Professor Davy_ was