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resulted, and fines were inflicted. The latter, however,
were in most cases so absurdly inadequate, that
it is utterly useless to expect any great improvement in
the quality of our food supply as long as offenders are
treated with such leniency.
In one case of milk adulteration in which my
certificate stated that the milk contained 5 per cent.
of extraneous water, and had been deprived of at least
30 per cent. of its fat, the magistrate dismissed the
summons. He stated that he found as a fact that the
milk was poor milk, and that the cream alleged to
have been abstracted might never have been present.
No opportunity was given to the analyst to support
his certificate, no evidence was given on the other side
to contradict it. It was simply set on one side in
favour of the private opinion of the magistrate, an
opinion absolutely at variance with the only reliable
evidence before him, and adopted in total ignorance
of the facts on which alone such an opinion could be
based, viz., the standard which the analyst had
employed, and the numerical results of the analysis,
neither of which weve stated on the certificate. It is of
course quite obvious that there is room for a certain
amount of difference of opinion as to what standard
should be used, or if the magistrate had had the
analytical figures before him he might, although it
would have been somewhat more than could be expected
of him, have been able to judge from them
whether too exacting a limit had been adopted; but in
the absence of all information on this point not even a