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35
The introduction of water into milk, coming from the
proprietary farm, is accounted for by the condition of the
refrigerator in use at that place. Pinholes, or perforations,
have been discovered since the adulteration took place in
the gridiron or coil, a section of the apparatus through
which a stream of cold water constantly runs when the
process of cooling is going on. Coils in general favour
with dairymen are made of metal, rolled into exceedingly
thin plates, in order that the pipe wall should interpose
between the warm milk and cold water a medium that
interferes in the least possible degree with thermic interchange.
The delicate metal, however, is liable to perforation
at any time in the ordinary exigencies of usage; and
when puncture takes place, milk passing over the coil
becomes dduted with water corresponding in amount with
the volume of leakage from the enclosed current. Such an
accident appears to have happened in connection with the
refrigerator in use at the proprietary farm; at least the
artificer who was summoned to examine it, declared to
the existence of three extraneous apertures. How long
watering had been going on, and to what extent dilution
had reached through this subtle agency it is impossible to
say, but added water in small quantity had been found in
milk distributed by Dairy B. a few weeks before, and it is
not unlikely that the same leakage was in operation then.
The expediency of exercising a close supervision over the
produce of dairies where refrigerators are at work is the
moral of this discovery.
D * 2