A better course than spasmodic prosecutions, frequently abortive, would be to fix a limit to the amount that might be used, and to render it obligatory upon the manufacturer to state prominently upon the label that the peas were coloured with copper. It may be mentioned in this connection that Professor Tunnicliffe issued a minority report to the main report of the Departmental Committee, in which he recommended that the amount of metallic copper to be allowed in preserved vegetables should not exceed half a grain per lb., and that its presence should always be declared. The colouring of sugar by means of tin salts stands upon a very different footing, for in that case the colouring is done with the definite object of deceiving the purchaser. At one time, pure Demerara cane sugar, which was brown from the presence of certain vegetable impurities, had a great reputation for its fine flavour, and still fetches a higher price in the market than purified beet sugar. This reputation has been traded upon by certain unscrupulous sugar dealers, who have discovered how to treat white beet sugar with a tin salt or with aniline dye-stuffs so as to give it the appearance of the old genuine Demerara cane sugar. At present it is practically impossible to distinguish, except by the flavour, between absolutely pure beet and cane sugars, but the dyed product is a very different substance from the brown Demerara sugar, and there have been numerous convictions for the fraudulent substitution of the one for the other. The presence of traces of arsenic in food products is a very much more serious matter than the presence of a small amount of copper. Arsenic is undoubtedly a cumulative poison, and the effects produced by the long-continued repetition of small doses were shown by the numerous fatal cases of poisoning caused by drinking arsenical beer, in the poisoning epidemic a few years ago. It may be safely asserted that for twenty years before that outbreak it had never occurred to anyone to test beer for arsenic. The possibility of its being present ought to have suggested itself, but apparently it never did. The origin of the arsenic in the beer is obvious, when it is remembered that glucose is one of the substances commonly used in the brewing of beer, and that glucose is prepared by treating starch with sulphuric acid, which, is in turn, frequently made from iron pyrites containing arsenic. After the source of the arsenic in the Manchester beer had been discovered, an arsenic "scare" set in. Every possible description of food was examined, and traces of arsenic were found in many hitherto unsuspected places. Malt, dried in kilns and allowed to come in contact with the fumes from coal, invariably contains an appreciable amount of arsenic derived from the coal, and even malts prepared with the greatest care usually contain about one part per million of arsenic. For all practical purposes, however, so small a trace is negligible.