In connection with this subject I may add that the French Government carefully protects its own citizens by rigid inspection and analysis of the wines offered for sale to French wine-drinkers; but does not feel bound to expend its funds and energies in hampering commerce by severe examination of the wines that are exported to ‘John Bull et son Île,’ especially as John Bull is known to have a robust constitution. Thus, vast quantities of brilliantly coloured liquid, flavoured with orris root, which would not be allowed to pass the barriers of Paris, but must go somewhere, is drunk in England at a cost of four times as much as the Frenchman pays for genuine grape-wine. The coloured concoction being brighter, skilfully cooked, and duly labelled to imitate the products of real or imaginary celebrated vineyards, is preferred by the English _gourmet_ to anything that can be made from simple grape-juice. I should add that a character somewhat similar to that of natural dryness is obtained by mixing with the grape-juice wine a secondary product, obtained by adding water to the _marc_ (_i.e._ the residue of skins, &c., that remains after pressing out the must or juice); a minimum of sugar is dissolved in the water, and this liquor is fermented. The skins and seeds contain much tannic acid or astringent matter, and this roughness imposes upon many wine-drinkers, provided the price charged for the wine thus cheapened be sufficiently high. Some years ago, while resident in Birmingham, an enterprising manufacturing druggist consulted me on a practical difficulty which he was unable to solve. He had succeeded in producing a very fine claret (Château Digbeth, let us call it) by duly fortifying with silent spirit a solution of cream of tartar, and flavouring this with a small quantity of orris root. Tasted in the dark it was all that could be desired for introducing a new industry to Birmingham; but the wine was white, and every colouring material that he had tried producing the required tint marred the flavour and bouquet of the pure Château Digbeth. He might have used one of the magenta dyes, but as these were prepared by boiling aniline over dry arsenic acid, and my Birmingham friend was burdened with a conscience, he refrained from thus applying one of the recent triumphs of chemical science. This was previous to the invasion of France by the phylloxera. During the early period of that visitation, French enterprise being more powerfully stimulated and less scrupulous than that of Birmingham, made use of the aniline dyes for colouring spurious claret to such an extent that the French Government interfered, and a special test paper named Œnokrine was invented by MM. Lainville and Roy, and sold in Paris for the purpose of detecting falsely-coloured wines.