The discussion which has arisen as to the introduction of
deadly poison into a specimen of beer submitted for analysis to the public analyst,—poison which was not discovered by the analyst,—seems to us to show that the Adulteration Acts should not require of the public analysts to discover all possible adulterations, but only the sort of adulterations which the ordinary adulterators of beer would find it most profitable to attempt. It may be, and is, we imagine, quite true that if beer and other sorts of food are to be really exhaustively analysed, a great deal more time and trouble and money would be needed than would be at all needful for the purposes in ques- tion. Bnt assuredly it is not desirable that the public analysts should profess to discover the presence of all sorts of mischievous ingredients where they only do attempt to discover the presence of the particular ingredients most commonly resorted to by adulterators. We do not blame the analyst for not discovering what he was not in the least prepared to suspect. But we do blame the Adulteration Acts for asking a sort of analysis which it would be impossible to secure under the actual con- ditions of the case.
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