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18
ment would enable added water to be calculated without
those divergencies which now arise to hinder the administration
of the Adulteration Acts, and to cast ridicule upon our
scientific reports.
3. (a) On considering the data given by your analysis,
and your conclusions as to the percentage of added water,
I gather that you added .05% to the percentage of nonfatty
solids, so as to raise their percentage from 8.20%
to 8.25 % ?
(b) You have not favoured me with the reference to any
published description of "the ordinary maceration
process," which was used for the examination of this
milk. May I ask whether it was the process described in
the second part of Dr. Bell's book—at pages 9 and 10;
or at pages 16, 17 and 18; or was it some other process ?
(c) By what data do you determine the additions to be
made for loss during storage in stale samples of milk ?
4. As you have pointed out, the results of our analyses
agree in this case. You will probably also agree that:—
(a) I might have signed your certificate as well as my
own 1
(b) You might have signed my certificate as well as
yours 1
(c) The difference in our conclusions was due simply to
our using different standards of milk in order to calculate
the percentage of added water ?
5. It is obvious that, at the Government Laboratory, you
wish to do what is fair and right according to law. You
cannot intend your certificate to be incomplete as a scientific
document, and thereby to put the Public Analyst into the
position of having to assail the certificate of a professional
brother, or else to submit himself to disparagement. Yet
such was the position in which I was placed by the certificate
sent to the magistrate on the 6th of November last.
Now, I venture to submit that your certificate, though
correct as a scientific document, is worded in such a manner
as to confuse the mind of a magistrate. For when you certify,
as in this case, that "the sample in question contains not less
than 3 percent. of added water," the magistrate naturally
assumes that this is probably the full extent of the adulteration.
How is he to know that you are comparing this
adulterated milk with the lowest passable standard of milk ?
If a milk is so poor that it can safely be certified as adulterated,
surely it is the most equitable course to compare it