Spices: Nutmeg, Pepper, Cinnamon, Mace, Cloves, Allspice, etc.— Whole spices are gen erally thought safe from adulteration; but they are not, as inferior members of the same species may be substituted for them with im mense loss of quality, exactly as if crab-apples were sold for dessert apples. Thus, wild nut megs are often sold for the cultivated ones and cassia almost always for cinnamon. The method of detection is to know the genuine. For instance, the best nutmegs are about an inch long and shaped like a damson plum, weigh one-seventh to one-fifth of an ounce and exude oil liberally when pricked with a pin; the wild ones are small and pointed and have less oil and The genuine Cey lon cinnamon is a roll, of delicate flavor which lasts long in the mouth, and tears rather than breaks; the cassia cinnamon is much coarser and thicker, breaks but does not tear, is rather mucilaginous when chewed and has a strong woody flavor. Cloves are adul terated by making them absorb water, of which they will take up a great deal to increase their weight. Another form of adulteration is the removal of a part of the essential oil and the subsequent sale of this exhausted spice at reg ular prices.
The immense adulteration of ground spices makes their convenience a costly purchase. At the outset, sawdust and starch are added even to the best, to absorb the oil which makes them difficult to grind; and it rarely stops there. Of 12 specimens called "ground cinnamon" ex amined by the New York Board of Health, only three contained any cinnamon whatever and even those were largely mixed with cassia and sawdust; the others were almost entirely composed of those ingredients, two were saw dust with a very little cassia and one was pure sawdust. Seventy per cent of the allspice, 70 per cent of the pepper, 82 per cent of the cinnamon, 57 per cent of the cassia, 76 per cent of the cloves, and 66 per cent of the ginger, was adulterated. The most universal adultera tions are starch for bulk, mustard for pun gency and turmeric for color. Other substances used are cocoanut shells, rice, charcoal, sand, ground date and olive stones, buckwheat hulls and the ground shells of walnuts, brazil nuts and almonds and corn meal. Ginger, like cloves, is often exhausted by removing its es sential oil with alcohol or even by soaking in water to procure the "water extract" used in making ginger ale. Black pepper demands a special note, as it is the exception rather than the rule to find it pure. A large percentage of the samples examined in the past have con tained no pepper at all. "Pepper dust" (the
sweepings of warehouses, in trade a regular article of sale as "P. D."), mustard husks, ground wheat, corn or rice, capsicum, and even gypsum and sand, have been found in it. Red or cayenne pepper is much purer than black pepper and is mainly adulterated with flour, crackers, rice, turmeric, red ochre and coal-tar dyes. Ground mace often contains cracker dust tinted with Venetian red.
White cane sugar has become so cheap that it does not pay to adulterate it and the old-time adulterants like marble-dust, terra alba, etc., have practically disappeared except in cheap confectionery. Sand was never much used except in brown sugar (4 per cent has been said to be unavoidable in raw Manila sugars, but any percentage is indictable if the direct addition can be proved) and glucose has taken its place; equally healthful with cane sugar but, of course, a fraud, as lacking in sweetening power, and a deception.
Owing to its cost and the difficulty of judging its quality by the eye or taste, tea has always been an article easily susceptible to adulteration since its introduction into the West; fortunately, more than most products, the price is an index of the quality and it is easy to procure a good article by paying for it. It has the distinction of having had a special law passed to prevent its adulteration, and for the most curious reason imaginable: the Act of 17 Geo. III alleges that the admixture of the leaves of sloe, ash, elder and other trees and shrubs with it was working great injury to the local timber and undergrowth. Being a luxury whose cost presses heavily on the very poor, its substitutes within the means of that class have usually none of the characteristic properties, good or bad, of the genuine and are mere flavored warm drinks; curiously, the poisonous adulteration alleged against it (groundlessly), that of obtaining its green color from copper pans, was against the very costliest brand of all. It has been found, however, that tea is •faced" with Prussian blue and indigo, soap stone, plumbago and gypsum. But the stuff sold to the poor, besides spent tea-leaves and those of various plants, as above, has been found to contain sheer dirt, sweepings, brick dust, iron filings and iron salts, sand, etc., un wholesome and liable to contain disease germs. Catechu is sometimes added to give increased astringency. Owing to careful inspection very little tea in the American market is adulterated otherwise than by mixing a lower grade tea with a more expensive one and selling the mix ture at the top price. See TEA.