Adulteration is a term not only applied in its proper sense to the fraudulent mixture of articles of commerce, food, drink, drugs, seeds, etc, with noxious or inferior ingredients, but also by magistrates and analysts to accidental impurity, and even in some cases to actual substitution.
The chief objects of adulteration are to increase the weight or volume of the article, to give a colour which either makes a good article more pleasing to the eye or else disguises an inferior one, to substitute a cheaper form of the article, or the same substance from which the strength has been extracted, or to give it a false strength.
Among the adulterations which were commonly practised around 1905 for the purpose of fraudulently increasing the weight or volume of an article are the following: Bread was adulterated with alum or sulphate of copper, which gives solidity to the gluten of damaged or inferior flour; with chalk or carbonate of soda to correct the acidity of such flour; and with boiled rice or potatoes, which enables the bread to carry more water, and thus to produce a larger number of loaves from a given quantity of flour. Wheatflour is adulterated with other inferior flours, as the flour from rice, bean, Indian-corn, potato, and with sulphate of lime, alum, etc. Milk was usually adulterated with water. The adulterations generally present in butter consisted of an undue proportion of salt and water, lard, tallow, and other fats; when of poor quality it was frequently coloured with a little annatto, and, at times, with the juice of carrots. Genuine butter should not contain less than 80 percent of butter-fat. Cheese was also coloured with annatto and other substances. Tea was adulterated chiefly in China with sand, iron-filings, chalk, gypsum, Chinaclay, exhausted tea leaves, and the leaves of the sycamore, horse-chestnut, and plum, whilst colour and weight were added by black-lead, indigo, Prussian-blue (one of the deleterious ingredients used by the Chinese in converting the lowest qualities of black into green teas), gum, turmeric, soapstone, catechu, and other substances.
Confections were adulterated with flour and sulphate of lime. Preserved vegetables were kept green and poisoned by salts of copper. The acridity of mustard is commonly reduced by flour, and the colour of the compound is improved by turmeric. Pepper was adulterated with linseed-meal, flour, mustard husks, etc. Colour was given to pickles by salts of copper, acetate of copper, etc. Ale was adulterated with common salt, Cocculus Indicus, grains of paradise, quassia, and other bitters, sulphate of iron, alum, etc. Porter and stout were mixed with sugar, treacle, salt, and an excess of water. Brandy was diluted with water, and burned sugar was added to improve the colour; sometimes bad whisky was flavoured and coloured so as to resemble brandy, and sold under its name.
Gin was mixed with excess of water, and flavouring matters of various kinds, with alum and tartar, were added. Rum was diluted with water, and the flavour and colour kept up by the addition of cayenne and burned sugar. For champagnegooseberry and other inferior wines were often substituted. Port was manufactured from red Cape and other inferior wines, the body, flavour, strength, and colour being produced by gum-dragon, the washings of brandy casks, and a preparation of German bilberries. Cheap brown sherry was mixed with Cape and other low-priced brandies, and was flavoured with the washings of brandy casks, sugar-candy, and bitter almonds. Pale sherries were produced by gypsum, by a process called plastering, which removes the natural acids as well as the colour of the wine. Other wines were adulterated with elderberry, logwood, Brazil-wood, cudbear, red beetroot, etc, for colour; with lime or carbonate of lime, carbonate of soda, carbonate of potash, and litharge, to correct acidity; with catechu, sloe-leaves, and oak-bark for astringency; with sulphate of lime and alum for removing colour; with cane-sugar for giving sweetness and body; with alcohol for fortifying; and with ether, especially acetic ether, for giving bouquet and flavour.
Medicines, such as jalap, opium, rhubarb, cinchonabark, scammony, aloes, sarsaparilla, squills, etc, were mixed with various foreign substances. Castor-oil has been adulterated with other oils; and inferior oils were often. mixed with cod-liver oil. Cantharides were often mixed with golden-beetle and also artificially-coloured glass.
The adulteration of seeds was largely practised also, the seed which forms the adulterant being of course of the most worthless kind that can be had. Thus turnip-seed was mixed with rape, wild mustard, or charlock, which are steamed and kiln-dried to destroy their vitality, so as to evade detection in the progress of growth; old and useless turnip-seed was also used fraudulently mixed with fresh seeds. Clover was also much mixed with plantain and mere weeds.
Acts against adulteration have been passed in various countries and at various times. In Britain there was a law against it as early as 1267. Research Adulteration
In the East Indies, attar is a general term for a perfume made from flowers. In Europe the term is generally used only of the attar or otto of roses, an essential oil made from Rosacentifolia, the hundred-leaved or cabbage-rose, Rosa damascena or damask-rose, Rosa moschdta or musk-rose, etc, 100,000 roses yielding only 180 grains of attar. Cashmere, Shiraz, and Damascus are celebrated for its manufacture, and there are extensive rose farms in the valley of Kezanlik in Roumelia and at Ghazipur in Benares. The oil is at first greenish, but afterwards it presents various tints of green, yellow, and red. It is concrete at all ordinary temperatures, but becomes liquid about 84 degrees Fahrenheit. It consists of two substances, a hydrocarbon and an oxygenated oil, and is frequently adulterated with the oils of rhodium, sandal-wood, and geranium, with the addition of camphor or spermaceti. Research Attar
Colza Oil is an oil formerly much employed for burning in lamps, and for many other purposes. It is expressed from the seeds of Brassica campestris oleifera, and from allied plants of the cabbage family. It is yellowish-brown, and has little or no smell. It becomes thick and solid only at very low temperatures. Research Colza Oil
In grammar, a subordinate clause is a clause serving as an adjective, adverb, or noun in a main sentence because of its position or a preceding conjunction. That is a subordinate clause is a part of a sentence which adds more information to the sentence, but is in itself not a stand alone sentence. An example of a subordinate clause might be: 'Because he had not eaten for a week', the full complex sentence being 'Because he had not eaten for a week the boy ate his cabbage.' Or 'Fed up with waiting, the woman left the restaurant'. A clause can be made into a subordinate clause by adding a conjunction (when, if, because, whenever) at the start of a clause. Subordinate clauses at the start of a sentence make the sentence more interesting, and encourage the reader to read on to find out what happens and to build emotion: for example: 'Red with rage, his bloodboiling, Grant felt the cold steel of the water pipe in his hand'. Research Subordinate Clause
In its narrow, everyday use, vegetable is a word indicating any herb that is cultivated specially for table use in whole or part, such as the turnip (root), cabbage (leaves), broccoli (flowers), peas and beans (fruit). In its widest sense it includes all living things that are not animals - trees, shrubs, herbs, ferns, mosses, seaweeds, fungi, and the microscopic diatoms.
The unit of structure, the cell, is essentially the same in both animals and plants, but the combination of the cells into tissues and organs shows marked differences.
All animals depend for their food upon material originally elaborated by plants. The green plants alone have the power to construct this basic food material from elemental substances, and physiological processes different from those of animal assimilation are rendered necessary. The fungi approach the animals in this respect: they must feed upon material that has already done service as part of the structure of other plants or of animals.
The fine divisions of roots explore the soil in search of water in which are dissolved the salts of sodium, iron, potassium, phosphorus, calcium, sulphur, etc. The hairs with which the rootlets are clothed absorb this fluid by osmosis, and it is passed upward through the long vessels of the wood bundles until it reaches the cells of the leaf. These cells contain green bodies (chloroplasts) in their protoplasm, and it is these that impart the green colour to leaves and soft shoots. In the leaf-skin (epidermis) there are innumerable pores or stomata through which surplus water from the roots is evaporated and through which atmospheric air is admitted to the spaces between the leaf-cells.
The chloroplasts in these cells have the power to utilise solar energy in decomposing the carbon dioxide of the air, and the cells retain the carbon, setting free the oxygen. Water from the roots is broken up also into its elements, hydrogen and oxygen, and with these plus carbonstarch is formed. This, converted into grape sugar, is passed from cell to cell to parts of the plant whore it is needed for the production of new cells, wood, bark, leaves, or fruit. Starch is the material from which are made all the organic substances produced by the plant.
The surplus over present requirements is stored up as reserves in seeds, enlarged roots or stems, bulbs, or tubers for renewed growth or floral display at a later season. Waste products are converted into resins, oils/wax, or alkaloids - many of these being of considerable economic value to man. Part of the water stream from the roots passes by osmosis from cell to cell, where it is necessary in order to keep the protoplasm in an active condition; any insufficiency is followed by a flagging of the tissues, the drooping of leaves and young shoots. In addition to the absorption of carbon by the protoplasts for building purposes, the leaf-cells also take up oxygen from the atmosphere and give off carbon much as animals do.
As the plant respires without lungs and assimilates without digestive organs, so also it can effect movements without a muscular system and react to external stimuli without a nervous system. It is sensitive to light and heat; many plants have distinct night and day positions for their leaves. It responds positively and negatively to the force of gravity, the root going down into the earth and the stem rising into the air. The growing tip of a stem or shoot commonly nutates, i.e. moves from side to side or in a circle or ellipse. The plant can orientate itself, i.e. take up a definite position in regard to the incidence of light or other external stimulus. These movements appear to be controlled largely by alterations in the position of the mobile chloroplasts.
The reproductive process is, in essentials, similar to that of animals, the ovules or seed-eggs in the ovary requiring to be fertilised by male sperms represented by the pollen grains produced in the anthers. The result of such fertilisation is to cause the ovule to develop into an embryo capable of further development under suitable conditions into a plant resembling the parent. Research Vegetable
Andira is a genus of leguminous American trees, with fleshy plum-like fruits. The wood is well fitted for building. The bark of Andira inermis, or cabbage-tree, is narcotic, and is used as an anthelminthic under the name of worm-bark or cabbage-bark. The powdered bark of Andira araroba was formerly used as a remedy in certain skin diseases, such as herpes. Research Andira
Borecole is a variety of Brassica oleracea, a cabbage with the leaves curled or wrinkled, and having no disposition to form into a hard head. Research Borecole
Brussels Sprouts (Sprouts) are one of the cultivated varieties of cabbage (Brassica oleracea). They have an elongated stem which grows to about 150 centimetres high with small clustered green heads like miniature cabbages. They get their name from being cultivated in great numbers near Brussels since 1213. Research Brussels Sprouts
The wild cabbage is a native of the coasts of Britain, but is much more common on other European shores. The kinds most cultivated are the common cabbage (Brassica oleracea), the savoy, the broccoli, and the cauliflower. The common cabbage forms its leaves into heads or bolls, the inner leaves being blanched. Its varieties are the white, the red or purple, the tree or cow cabbage for cattle (branching and growing when in flower to the height of three meters), and the very delicate Portugal cabbage. The garden sorts form valuable culinary vegetables, and are used at table in various ways. Research Cabbage
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Adulteration
