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
Agriculture is the art of cultivating the ground, more especially with the plough and in large areas or fields, in order to raise grain and other crops for man and beast; including the art of preparing the soil, sowing and planting seeds, removing the crops, and also the raising and feeding of cattle or other live stock. This art is the basis of all other arts, and in all countries coeval with the first dawn of civilization. At how remote a period it must have been successfully practised in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China we have no means of knowing, but archaeologists have found evidence of agriculture being practised around 7000 BC. Egypt was renowned as a corn country in the time of the Jewish patriarchs, who themselves were keepers of flocks and herds rather than tillers of the soil. Naturally very little is known of the methods and details of agriculture in early times, though field archaeologists at Butser Ancient Farm in Hampshire have been conducting experiments for some years.
Among the ancient Greeks the implements of agriculture were very few and simple. Hesiod, who wrote a poem on agriculture as early as the eighth century BC, mentions a plough consisting of three parts, the share-beam, the draught-pole, and the plough-tail, but antiquarians are not agreed as to its exact form. The ground received three ploughings, one in autumn, another in spring, and a third immediately before sowing the seed. Manures were applied, and the advantage of mixing soils, as sand with clay or clay with sand, was understood. Seed was sown by hand, and covered with a rake. Grain was reaped with a sickle, bound in sheaves, thrashed, then winnowed by wind, laid in chests, bins, or granaries, and taken out as wanted by the family, to be ground.
Agriculture was highly esteemed among the ancient Romans. Cato, the censor, who was celebrated as a statesman, orator, and general, derived his highest honours from having written a voluminous work on agriculture. In his Georgics Virgil has thought the subject of agriculture worthy of being treated in the most graceful and harmoniousverse. The Romans used a great many different implements of agriculture. The plough is represented by Cato as of two kinds, one for strong, the other for light soils. Yarro mentions one with two mould-boards, with which, he says, 'when they plough, after sowing the seed, they are said to ridge'. Pliny mentions a plough with one mould-board, and others with a coulter, of which he says there were many kinds. Fallowing was a practice rarely deviated from by the Romans. In most cases a fallow and a year's crop succeeded each other. Manure was collected from nearly or quite as many sources as have been resorted to by the moderns. Irrigation on a large scale was applied both to arable and grasslands.
The Romans introduced their agricultural knowledge among the Britons, though it is known that the Britons were already practising agriculture, and during the most flourishing period of the Roman occupation large quantities of corn were exported from Britain to the Continent. During the time that the Angles and Saxons were extending their conquests over the country agriculture may have been neglected; but afterwards it was practised with some success among the Anglo-Saxon population, especially, as was generally the case during the middle ages, on lands belonging to the church. Swine formed at this time a most important portion of the live stock, finding plenty of oak and beech mast to eat.
The feudal system introduced by the Normans, though beneficial in some respects as tending to ensure the personal security of individuals, operated powerfully against progress in agricultural improvements. War and the chase, the two ancient and deadliest foes of husbandry, formed the most prominent occupations of the Norman princes and nobles. Thriving villages and smiling fields were converted into deer forests, vexatious imposts were laid on the farmers, and the serfs had no interest in the cultivation of the soil. But the monks of every monastery retained such of their lands as they could most conveniently take charge of, and these they cultivated with great care, under their own inspection, and frequently with their own hands. The various operations of husbandry, such as manuring, ploughing, sowing, harrowing, reaping, thrashing, winnowing, etc, are incidentally mentioned by the writers of those days; but it is impossible to collect from them a definite account of the manner in which those operations were performed.
The first English treatise on husbandry and the best of the early works on the subject was published in the reign of Henry VIII in 1534, by Sir A Fitzherbert, judge of the Common Pleas. It is entitled the Book of Husbandry, and contains directions for draining, clearing, and inclosing a farm, for enriching the soil, and rendering it fit for tillage. Lime, marl, and fallowing are strongly recommended. The subject of agriculture attained some prominence during the reign of Elizabeth I. The principal writers of that period were Tusser, Googe, and Sir Hugh Platt. Tusser's Five Hundredth Points of Good Husbandry (first complete edition published in 1580) conveys much useful instruction in metre, but few works of this time contain much that is original or valuable.
The first half of the seventeenth century produced no systematic work on agriculture, though several on different branches of the subject. About 1645 the field cultivation of red clover was introduced into England, the merit of this improvement being due to Sir Richard Weston, author of a Discourse on the Husbandry of Brabant and Flanders. The Dutch had devoted much attention to the improvement of winter roots, and also to the cultivation of clover and other artificial grasses, and the farmers and proprietors of England soon saw the advantages to be derived from their introduction. The cultivation of clover soon spread, and Sir Richard Weston seems also to have introduced turnips. Potatoes had been introduced during the latter part of the sixteenth century, but were not for long in general cultivation. A number of writers on agriculture appeared in England during the Commonwealth, the most important works on the subject being Blythe's Improver Improved and Hartlib's Legacy. The former writer speaks of a rotation, or rather alternation of crops, and well knew the use of lime, as also of other manures. In the eighteenth century the first name of importance in British agriculture is that of Jethro Tull, a gentleman of Berkshire, who began to drillwheat and other crops about the year 1701, and whose Horse-hoeing Husbandry was published in 1731.
Jethro Tull was a great advocate of the system of sowing crops in rows or drills with an interval between every two or three rows wide enough to allow of ploughing or hoeing to be carried on. After the time of Jethro Tull's publication no great alteration in British agriculture took place, until Robert Bakewell and others effected some important improvements in the breeds of cattle, sheep, and swine, in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The raising and maintenance of live stock, especially of sheep, was a characteristic of English farming from a very early time, and for several centuries the country had almost a monopoly in the supply of wool. To Bakewell we owe the breed of Leicestersheep. By the end of the nineteenth century it was a common practice to alternate green crops with grain crops, instead of exhausting the land with a number of successive crops of corn. A well-known writer on agriculture at this period, and one who did a great deal of good in diffusing a knowledge of the subject, was Arthur Young.
Scotland was for a long time behind England in agricultural progress. Great progress was made during the eighteenth century, however, especially in the latter half of it, turnips being introduced as a field-crop, and new implements such as the swing-plough and the thrashing-machine coming into general use. The construction of good roads through the country also gave agriculture a great impulse. During the wars caused by the French revolution of 1795 to 1814 the high price of agricultural produce led to an extraordinary improvement in agriculture all over Britain. The establishment of the institution called the National Board of Agriculture was also of very great service to British husbandry at this period. Though a private association it was assisted by an annual parliamentary grant, and prizes were given by it for the encouragement of experiments and improvements in agriculture. It existed from 1793 to 1816.
Among other societies which have greatly furthered the progress of agriculture in Britain, the chief are the Royal Agricultural Society of England, established in 1838; the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, founded in 1783; and the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland, instituted in 1841. The objects of these and similar societies were such as the following: to encourage the introduction of improvements in agriculture; to encourage the improvement of agricultural implements and farm buildings; the application of chemistry to agriculture; the destruction of insects injurious to vegetation; to promote the discovery and adoption of new varieties of grain, or other useful vegetables; to collect information regarding the management of woods, plantations, and fences; to improve the education of those supported by the cultivation of the soil; to improve the veterinary art; to improve the breeds of live stock, etc. Shows are held, at which prizes are distributed for live stock, implements, and farm produce.
Through the efforts of the above-mentioned and other societies, the investigations of scientific men, the general diffusion of knowledge among all classes, and the necessity of competing with producers in foreign countries, agriculture made vast strides in Britain during the nineteenth century. Among the chief improvements were deep ploughing and thoroughdraining By the introduction of new or improved implements the labour necessary to the carrying out of agricultural operations was greatly diminished, as by the steam thrashing-machine, the steam-plough, and the reaping-machine. The nineteenth century saw also the introduction of chemistry into agriculture in Britain. The organization of plants, the primary elements of which they are composed, the food on which they live, and the constituents of soils, were all investigated, and most important results obtained particularly with regard to manures and rotations. Artificial manures, in great variety to supply the elements wanted for plant growth, came into common use at the end of the nineteenth century, not only increasing the produce of lands previously cultivated, but extending the limits of cultivation itself. An improvement in all kinds of stock became more and more general, feeding was conducted on more scientific principles, and improved varieties of plants used as field crops were introduced at the same time. At the end of the nineteenth century was introduced the system of ensilage for preserving fodder in a green state. However, by the start of the 20th century writers were proclaiming that, chiefly owing to foreign competition, agriculture had become a very unprofitable industry in Britain.
It is only since the nineteenth century that much progress was made in perfecting implements and machinery for cultivating the soil, sowing seed, drilling, rolling, hoeing, reaping, digging, etc. The first application of steam to ploughing dates from 1770, when Richard Edgeworth took out a patent for a steam ploughing machine, but it was 1852 before such application proved of any economic value. As early as 1829 a reaping-machine was invented by the Reverend Mr. Bell of Carmylie, Forfarshire, which, in an improved form, was still in use at the start of the twentieth century when numerous mowing and reaping-machines of ingenious construction were also introduced, many of which not only cut down the grain, but also bind it up into sheaves. At the start of the twentieth century steam was extensively used as a motive power in thrashing, in chaff-cutting, turnip-slicing, and even in churning. Only to be replaced after the invention of the combustion engine with petrol-power. Mechanisation led to the enlargement of fields, with small fields being amalgamated by the destruction of separating hedgerows to enable mechanical tractors and other farm vehicles to operate efficiently. The effect upon wildlife in Britain was devastating, and public concern started to grow.
The Second World War revolutionized agriculture in Britain, and led to the development of intensive farming techniques known as 'factory farming' and new anonymous breeds of livestock being developed which mature very quickly. During the later half of the twentieth century the public in Britain rebelled against the inhumanity of intensive animal husbandry, typified by 'battery hens' in which thousands of hens are kept in individual tiny cages within massive warehouses, unable to stretch let alone move around, and free-range or more traditional animal husbandry started to reappear in commercial agriculture.
The twentieth century also saw the wide scale introduction of chemical fertilizers and insecticides, many of which were harmful to the consumers and from a public backlash emerged a return to traditional farming, known as organic farming. Research Agriculture
Bird-lime is a viscous substance used for entangling birds so as to make them easily caught, twigs being for this purpose smeared with it at places where birds resort. It is prepared from holly-bark, being extracted by boiling; also - mainly in Italy - from the viscid berries of the mistletoe.
Bird-lime was traditionally prepared from holly-bark which was boiled for between ten and twelve hours, where upon the green bark becoming seperated from the rest, it was covered over and left in a moist place for two weeks and then pounded into a rough paste so that no woody fibres were discernable, and then washed in ruunning water. After washing the holly-bark bird-line was left to ferment for four or five days, being regularly skimmed to remove any surface waste, and was then ready for use. Before use, two parts of holly-bark birdlime were mixed with one part nut-oil or grease, and mixed together while being warmed over a fire. Research Bird-Lime
Cologne yellow is a pigment consisting of two parts yellow chromate of lead, one of sulphate of lead, and seven of sulphate of lime or gypsum. It is prepared by precipitating a mixture of nitrate of lead and nitrate of lime with sulphate of soda and chromate of potash. Research Cologne Yellow
Crown-glass is the hardest and most colourless kind of window-glass, made almost entirely of sand and alkali and a little lime, and used in connection with flint-glass for optical instruments in order to destroy the disagreeable effect of the aberration of colours. Research Crown-Glass
Fresco Painting is a method of mural painting in water colours on fresh or wet grounds of lime or gypsum. Mineral or earthy pigments are employed, which resist the chemical action of lime. In drying, the colours are incorporated with the plaster, and are thereby rendered as permanent as itself.
In producing fresco paintings, a finished drawing on paper, called a cartoon, exactly the size of the intended picture, is first made, to serve as a model. The artist then has a limited portion of the wall covered over with a fine sort of plaster, and upon this he traces from his cartoon the part of the design suited fur the space. As it is necessary to the success and permanency of his work that the colours should be applied while the plaster is yet damp, no more of the surface is plastered at one time than what the artist can finish in one day. A portion of the picture once commenced, needs to be completely finished before leaving it, as fresco does not admit of retouching after the plaster has become dry. On completing a day's work, any unpainted part of the plaster is removed, cutting it neatly along the outline of a figure or other definite form, so that the joining of the plaster for the next day's work may be concealed.
The art is very ancient, remains of it being found in India, Egypt, Mexico, etc. Examples of Roman frescoes are found in Pompeii and other places. After the beginning of the 15th century fresco painting became the favourite process of the greatest Italian masters, and many of their noblest pictorial efforts are frescoes on the walls of palaces and churches. Some ancient wall-paintings are executed in what is called Fresco Secco, which is distinguished from true fresco by being executed on dry plaster, which is moistened with lime-water before the colours are applied. Fresco painting was revived during the 19th century, and works of this kind were executed in the British Houses of Parliament and other public and private buildings, more especially in Germany. Research Fresco
Horn is a general term applied to all hard and pointed appendages of the head, as in deer, cattle, etc, but as a term denoting a particular kind of substance nothing should be called horn which is not derived from the epidermis or outer, layer of the integument, whether on the trunk, hoofs, or head.
Horn is a tough, flexible, semi-transparent substance, most liberally developed in the horns of bovine animals, but also found in connection with the 'shell' of the tortoise, the nails, claws, and hoofs of animals, the beak of bird and turtle, etc
Horn is softened very completely by heat, so as to become readily flexible, and to adhere to other pieces similarly softened. True horn consists principally of an albuminoid principle, keratin, with a small portion of gelatine and a little phosphate of lime. In some species of animals the males only have horns, as for instance the stag. In cattle both male and female have horns, though there are also hornless cattle.
Horns differ widely in the case of different animals. Thus the horns of deer consist of bone, and are deciduous; those of the giraffe are independent bones, with a covering of hairy skin; those of oxen, sheep, and antelopes consist of a bony core covered by a horny sheath. The horns of the rhinoceros alone consist exclusively of horny matter. The horns of oxen, sheep, goats, and antelopes are never shed, except in the case of the prong-horned antelope. The number never normally exceeds four, and in the case of deer the horns are branched.
The various kinds of horns were formerly employed for many purposes. The principal formerly used in the arts are those of the ox, buffalo, sheep, and goat. Deer horns were almost exclusively employed for the handles of knives and of sticks and umbrellas. Those which furnish true horn can be softened by heat (usually in boiling water), cut into sheets of various thickness, which sheets may be soldered or welded together at the edges so as to form plates of large dimensions, and were formerly polished and dyed so as to imitate the much more expensive tortoise-shell. The clippings of horn may be welded together in the same manner, and were formerly made into snuff-boxes, powder horns, handles for umbrellas, knives, forks, etc. As horn has the valuable property of taking on and retaining a sharp impression from a die, many highly ornamental articles were also turned out. Combs for the hair were made from the flattened sheets, and out of the solid parts of buffalo horns beautiful carvings were made. Research Horn
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Adulteration
