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Cayenne pepper. It is known in the market by the name of P. D. and a still viler sort by that of D. P. D.; pepper dust, and dust pepper dust.

WHITE PEPPER, a product of the same plant, and which, when native, is little inferior to black pepper, is sometimes prepared from that article so as to lose much of its peculiar flavour and pungency.

Mr. Accum takes no notice of what is known under the name of Jamaica pepper; or, as it is sometimes called, from its resemblance to a combination of several aromatic substances, such as nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon, all-spice. It is also denominated pimento. Our reason for now mentioning it is, that we have been able distinctly to trace several very distressing symptoms to its use, as met with in various confectionary and culinary productions; whence we conclude, that some pernicious ingredients are employed to counterfeit it, the native fruit being considered a safe and agreeable stimulant. We would recommend our author to investigate what is so styled in the shops.

CAYENNE PEPPER is sometimes poisonously adulterated with red lead, in order to prevent it, or something under its name and that contains a portion of it, from becoming pale on exposure to the light. The lead may be detected in one of the ways formerly mentioned.

PICKLES of various kinds, that they may exhibit a fine green colour, which is in high esteem by those who court appearance at the expense of health, are often rendered highly pernicious by means of copper held in solution by the vinegar with which they are preserved. Every body knows, that a vessel made of that metal is conceived to be quite essential for their preparation. For our own parts, we have often endeavoured to overcome the prejudice in its favour, but always unsuccessfully-the good house-wives insisting on its absolute necessity, in order to make their preserves green. On which account, it is a rule with us always to allow green pickles to be preserved. Persons who chuse to be more particularly attentive to the colour of these substances, are of course very careful to adopt the common prescription of books on cookery, to put a few half-pence among the pickles when they are boiling in the vinegar! Now this, we humbly conceive, is a waste of money; because the addition of little verdigrise or carbonate of copper will be found a much cheaper, and more ready process for poisoning!

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Copper may be at once detected in pickles, by mincing them down, and pouring over them liquid ammonia, diluted with an equal quantity of water; when, if that metal be present, the liquor will assume a blue colour. There is another mode which

Mr. Accum might have noticed, viz. to insert in the suspected liquor a piece of polished steel, which will soon become coated with copper, if present.

VINEGAR is frequently sophisticated so as to appear very strong, by the addition of sulphuric acid. This may be detect ed by dropping into it a solution of acetate of barytes, from which the sulphuric acid wil! form a white precipitate, (sulphate of barytes,) the nature of which is, after having been made redhot in the fire, not to be dissolved by nitric acid.

Certain acid vegetables are occasionally used, to give pungency to vinegar. They can only be detected by an experienced palate.

The vinegar of commerce sometimes contains a metal in solution; but this is more often tin than lead.

CREAM is often adulterated with rice-powder, arrow-root, or other mealy substances, and particularly by the confectioner and pastry-cook. These ingredients are quite harmless; but the practice of imposition is always to be condemned.

Among the CONFECTIONARY GOOps discovered to be poisonous, Mr. Accum particularly mentions certain sugar drops, which are coloured by an inferior kind of vermilion, containing red lead; other sweet-meats, coloured with preparations of copper; and various foreign conserves, such as limes, citrons, &e. which are vitiated by the same metal. The means of discovering the pernicious metals, are those already described.

CATSUP.--On this subject,' a quotation will best answer the purpose of a warning.

"This article is very often subjected to one of the most reprehensible modes of adulteration ever devised. Quantities are daily to be met with, which, on a chemical examination, are found to abound with copper. Indeed this condiment is often nothing else than the residue left behind after the process employed for obtaining distilled vinegar, subsequently diluted with a decoction of the outer green husk of the walnut, and seasoned with all-spice, cayenne pepper, pimento, onions, and common salt. The quantity of copper which we have, more than once, detected in this sauce, used for seasoning, and which, on account of its cheapness, is much resorted to by people in the lower walks of life, has exceeded the proportion of lead to be met with in other articles employed in domestic economy

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Under the head of POISONOUS CUSTARDS, Mr. Accum offers some observations on the danger of employing the leaves of the cherry laurel to give an almond, or a kernel flavour to custards, puddings, and other delicacies of the table. The practice is undoubtedly to be reprobated, as the plant is well ascertained to possess a highly poisonous quality; and there are several instances on record of fatal effects from it, when taken even in the small quantities in which it exists in these culinary products. The same substance, it may be remarked, is occasionally added,

most imprudently, to brandy, and other spirits, for the purpose of giving them the flavour of noyeau.

ANCHOVY SAUCE has been discovered, in several samples, to be vitiated, and rendered poisonous by the presence of lead, which appears to have been added in a form approaching to that of red oxide, in order to improve the colour.

Mr. Accum informs us, that various kinds of LOZENGES, particularly those which contain articles little or not soluble in water, as ginger, cream of tartar, magnesia, are often sophisticated by pipe-clay.

OLIVE OIL is sometimes contaminated with lead, in consequence of the fruit which yields it having been pressed between leaden plates. Water, impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen, applied to it, will indicate the lead. It is also sometimes mixed with oil of poppy seeds, which may be discovered by its remaining fluid at the freezing temperature; whereas the genuine oil becomes solid.

Genuine MUSTARD is said to be rarely met with, either in. powder or in the state of paste, especially the latter, which is often made up of a mixture of mustard and common wheaten flour, with a portion of Cayenne pepper, and a large quantity of bay salt. There is, in reality, nothing deleterious in the compound; but it is inferior, in quality and flavour, to the true

substance.

For LEMON ACID in the concrete state, the cheaper tartareous acid is substituted by fraudulent dealers. To discriminate them

"It is only necessary to add a concentrated solution of the suspected acid, to a concentrated solution of muriate of potash, taking care that the solution of the acid is in excess. If a precipitate ensues, the fraud is obvious; because citric acid does not produce a precipitate with a solution of muriate of potash."

On the subject of POISONOUS MUSHROOMS, our author urges the well-known necessity of distinguishing the wholesome edible plant from those fungi which have noxious properties. It is obvious that equal care is required, in the preparation of catsup from mushrooms, to select them of the proper kind; and it is proper to observe, too, that they be not so old as to have got into the stage of putrefaction.

SODA WATER, as it has often been prepared, is apt to be contaminated both with copper and lead, the apparatus employed in the manufacture of it largely consisting of these metals, and the excess of acid contained in it enabling the water to act powerfully on them. In consequence of this serious evil, some manufacturers have lately constructed apparatus for the purpose, wholly of earthen ware, or of glass.

Mr. Accum concludes his treatise with several judicious observations, intended to point out the dangers attendant on the use of copper and leaden vessels in the preparation and preservation of food. We think we have said enough to suggest the idea of these dangers in a very striking manner; for the inference is decisive-if the introduction of a minute portion of these metals into articles of nourishment or luxury be so greatly to be dreaded, and so much to be guarded against, what madness and folly must it be to employ them so extensively, and in such a manner, that the bulk of our food shall of necessity be in intimate contact with them long enough to be impregnated with their poison!

We quote the words of Mr. Thiery, referred to by Mr. Ac

cum.

"Our food receives its quantity of poison in the kitchen, by the use of copper pans and dishes. The brewer mingles poison in our beer, by boiling it in copper vessels. The sugar-baker employs copper pans; the pastry-cook bakes our tarts in copper moulds; the confectioner uses copper vessels; the oilman boils his pickles in copper or brass vessels, and verdigrise is plentifully formed by the action of the vinegar upon the metal."

A single dose of this poison may not prove fatal in any individual case; but the continual introduction of it into the system is almost certain to entail highly injurious consequences. Lead, not so frequently employed in the construction of domestic vessels, is occasionally so. Thus, in some countries, milk-pans are often made of that metal. It is sometimes to be seen on the rims or sides of brewing vessels; leaden pans for salting meat are not uncommon; the presses used in squeezing apples for cyder often consist of it; and, which is particularly deserving of notice, the cream-coloured earthen ware adopted for pickles and other preserves, is glazed by means of an oxide of the metal, and is readily acted on by acid substances!

The consideration of the hazards to which we are thus so perpetually exposed, may well induce us to adopt the suggestion which Mr. Accum has quoted in his preliminary observations"in the midst of life we are in death." This, indeed, very fitly expresses the condition of our being while we inhabit our present temporary abode. Mankind are liable to the operation of a thousand agents, known and unknown, any one of which may speedily terminate their existence, or render it miserable. We are far from thinking, that the highest information to which it is pos sible to attain respecting natural causes will secure them against every possible source of evil; and, for our own part, we utterly despair of our species ever arriving at a state of sublunary society, contemplated in vision by a singular genius, in which the

necessity of death will be superseded. But we are clear, that knowledge, though it may destroy the enjoyment of the fool who never suspects danger, is one of the foundations of happiness; and that human life, amid all the turmoils, and difficulties, and unpleasantnesses which daily beset it, is a gift worth preserving, at the expense of a little inquiry, a little caution, and a little selfdenial. We may have wearied or frightened our readers by the length and contents of these pages; but we hope we have put them in possession of some of the means by which they may protect themselves and others from fraudulent artifices and the causes of incalculable mischief. If so, their gratitude, as well as ours, is assuredly due to Mr. Accum, from whose well-exercised skill and copious acquisitions we have deduced the benefit.

ART. IV. Political Essays on Public Characters. By WILLIAM HAZLITT. Hone, London, 1819. Pp. 475. Svo.

We owe this volume to a singular cause. For several years past, Mr. Hazlitt has amused, and, we presume, profited himself by his lucubrations in the various newspaper and literary journals of the day. As there was little remarkable in these, save perhaps, their extraordinary tone of self-conceit, coupled with an unusual quantity of errors in rhetoric, they seem to have reached the goal of oblivion, somewhat sooner than his later productions. The eccentric matter, and, above all, the strange, incoherent, Bess-o-bedlam diction of his lectures, have excited a considerable noise, which Mr. Hazlitt has mistaken for fame. It has therefore occurred to him, and two or three others of the notable corps to which he belongs, that he must needs be a man of genius; and as all that emanates from genius is interesting to the public, it has been resolved to collect into a volume every scrap or jotting, from the musty pages of Examiners, Chroni cles, Couriers, &c. that can be fairly traced to Mr. Hazlitt,hinc illae lacrymae.

Of such a disinterested man, it would scarcely be fair to hazard the conjecture, that the book is a mere job. Doubtless, the uppermost wish in the author's mind was to earn a portion of that sweet sounding applause which has been so graciously bestowed on his blameless publisher, and others of the school.

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