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62
REPORT UPON ARTICLES ANALYSED
DURING THE YEAR 1870.
MADE TO THE
Vestry of St. James;s Westminister,
BY
JAMES EDMUNDS, M.D., M.R.C.P. Lond., F.R.M.S., F.C.S.,
Medical Officer of Health and Public Analyst for St. James's, Westminster.
Rev. Sir and Gentlemen,
During the four quarters of the year 1879, under the
provisions of the "Sale of Food and Drugs Act, 1875, Sixty-seven
samples were procured for analysis, and there were submitted by
parishioners two other samples. Both the latter were genuine.
In one sample of milk procured the dry solid residue was only
6.75 per cent., but it contained 20 per cent. of cream. Another
sample yielded 16.3 per cent. of dry solid residue. One sample
contained only 4 per cent. of cream, while other samples contained
more than a third of their volume of cream. I have no
doubt that the proportion of cream which is retailed with the
milk often depends upon casual circumstances connected with the
measuring it out and distributing it from vessels in which it has
been standing a longer or shorter time, and from which at one
time the measure may take up chiefly the cream on the surface,
and at another may take up the poor milk left by casual and