The manufacturer of non-alcoholic wines stands in a very difficult position. If he employs preservatives in sufficient quantity effectively to stop fermentation he is liable to be prosecuted under the Food and Drugs Act. If, on the other hand, no preservative is used, the liquid is liable to ferment, and the manufacturer may then be prosecuted for selling a fermented liquid without a licence. Hence it follows that if the use of preservatives in lime juice cordial and the like is to be prohibited, the law ought to be rigidly enforced and not applied in the present haphazard fashion, which allows one manufacturer to sell his goods unchallenged for years, and drags his competitor into one police court after another. It is hardly fair that matters which are so much questions of opinion should be left to be fought out in the police courts before magistrates who have no technical knowledge to deal with them. The position, however, was well put by a magistrate a year or two ago in giving his decision in a prosecution for the sale of lime juice cordial preserved with salicylic acid. Evidence was given by chemists and medical men for the prosecution that such an addition was injurious, while a number of scientific witnesses of equal eminence were present to support the view of the defendants. The magistrate, without calling upon the defence, dismissed the case. He held that there was an irreconcilable conflict of opinion between the purists who would allow no preservatives whatever in such products and the manufacturer who had to meet the popular demand for such an article that would keep after it had been opened, and he considered that it had not been proved that the amount of salicylic acid was in excess of that needed for that purpose. Incidentally he remarked that if notification of the addition of such preservatives on the label were made compulsory, "then the fun would begin." You would see notices of So-and-so's lime juice preserved with sulphide, "harmless, but with a smell of bad eggs." Or of So-and-so's lemon squash, "preserved with salicylic acid, refreshing, but ruinous to the digestion." One of the recommendations of the Departmental Committee of 1899 was that means should be provided for the establishment of a separate Court of Reference, which should deal with the question of preservatives in food and decide which should be permissible and in what quantities they should be allowed. Such a Court of Reference, in which there should be representatives not only of the medical and chemical professions, but also of the large manufacturers and dealers in food, would tend to remove the present state of uncertainty on this point.