The evidence given before a Select Committee of the House of Commons appointed to deal with the Food and Drugs Acts suggests that probably one-fifth of the butter imported into this country is adulterated, while it is almost impossible to form any estimate of the loss to the consumer from adulterated groceries and from the sale of foreign meat as "best English." With few exceptions, nearly everything we eat or drink--in fact, nearly everything we buy--is liable to be substituted for what we want, or to be mixed with something else that we do not want--at all events, at the price we have to pay for it. There is thus considerable excuse for the amusing blunder made by a counsel who was cross-examining Mr. Siemens, the electrical expert, in a case in which there was a dispute about the working of some electrical plant. "I think, Mr. Siemens, that you have had a long experience in connection with electricity?" "That is so." "Well, now, I want you to tell me whether in the course of all your experience you have ever known electricity to be adulterated?" "In only one instance," replied the witness. "And when was that?" "In the phrase 'greased lightning,'" was the instant witty reply of the electrical expert. But there are few commodities which can be bought or sold that have the clean record of electricity. In every direction, competition is daily becoming keener, and rival firms "cut" the prices, each forcing the other to sell either with the minimum of profit or to stop selling altogether. Under these conditions there is a strong temptation for a small firm in danger of being crushed out of existence by its competitors to avail itself of the additional profit afforded by adulteration, and thus be able to sell its goods at a lower price than its more scrupulous rivals. In many cases the adulterated articles are sold unknowingly, the shopman being tempted by the offer of an alleged genuine product at a very low price, while the foreign manufacturer who supplies him with the goods cheerfully accepts the risk of prosecution, well knowing that he cannot be brought to book. Frequently the adulteration is most skilfully effected, and every fresh advance in the chemical methods of detecting foreign ingredients is scientifically met by the adulterator. The old gross forms of adulteration are, for the most part, things of the past, save, of course, in the case of foods like milk, which contain much water, and where the temptation to increase the amount is frequently too strong to be resisted. The old story of the grocer who called his apprentice to prayers after telling him to "water the treacle and sand the sugar," has lost its point, at all events as regards sanding the sugar. The fraud is too palpable. And the same may be said of other unskilful forms of adulteration, such as the addition of gypsum to flour, chalk to milk, starch to butter, and so on.