Dr. Muter said that, with regard to the question of the detection of bitters in beer, he would say at once that he did not quite share the president's views as to there being no difficulty in detecting and identifying them. It was a subject that he had worked at in former years in connection with his book on materia medica. He had made numerous experiments himself, and he had repeated many of the published experiments and he could prognosticate that, as the president went along, ho would meet with several published reactions which were partially incorrect and perfectly misleading. Although a few bitters would be found to be comparatively easy of detection - quassia, for instance, was a bitter which spoke very much for itself - many of them were, to a great extent, involved in difficulty and obscurity at the present time. There was no branch of chemistry that so much undesirable matter had been published about as that relating to materia medica, and many of the older researches were incorrect. No doubt one cause of this was that nowadays they had much better analytical appliances than the men who made these experiments. He did not for a moment mean to say that they were now cleverer than past observers, but, for instance, they could not wash lead and other similar intractable precipitates in former days as one could now do by the aid of the filter pump, and the color reactions for more than one proximate principle, which were given in books, were really not due to the principle at all, but to the traces of reagents and other matters that remained with them owing to the imperfect washing, which was almost certain to occur before the days of filter pumps. He was afraid that until the president and others who might take the subject up had had time to work it out by the aid of modern appliances it would be going too far to say they could swear positively that a sample contained no hop substitute.

Mr. Allen said he thought they could tell whether it contained hop or a substitute for hops.

Dr. Muter then said in that case how would they get on in cross-examination, seeing that they could not name the substitute? He did not remember how he first became acquainted with the lead process, but he believed that he could put his hands on it now. It must be quite thirteen or fourteen years ago since it was first published. Immediately it was brought out he had made experiments upon it, working on large quantities. Since that there had really been no other process that he knew of. He himself had used a process very similar to that mentioned, viz, precipitation with subacetate of lead, siphoning off the clear liquor after settlement, removing the excess of lead from this liquid, concentrating and tasting, and then extracting with immiscible solvents.

Now came a difficulty which shook his faith in his powers as an analyst as regards hop substitutes. He had always believed in the process - from practicing upon beer with various added bitters - until some time ago he got a beer which he was privately assured by the maker to have no bitter other than hops. This sample he put through the process and he got a bitter out of that beer with chloroform after lead. He worked on a fairly large quantity, but the process here showed bitters other than hop, although he was assured that the sample represented as pure a beer as could possibly be obtained. Another difficulty was the quantity they might have to work on. Supposing an inspector brought them one-half or one-third of a pint, where was the process they could use? He had put bitters in the beer and worked on such quantities and failed to find them. In a case he knew of some time ago there was some difficulty about some strychnine that was put in beer; he was aware of the very small quantity that had been put in, because the chemist who had been stupid enough to lend himself to such a transaction had informed him of it. He made up some beer and divided it into two portions, tried for extraneous bitters in one portion by the regular beer way and there was not a sign of it; he then tried the other portion with a special toxicological process for strychnine and found it. He had, even then, to use eight ounces of the beer for this purpose, to get a really satisfactory ordinary reaction. In the present state of chemical knowledge it would not be, in his opinion safe to say they could detect any amount of added bitters to beer, however small, and go to the length of naming those bitters on the quantity they would have usually brought to them by an inspector. With a gallon of beer and an unlimited fee covering many days' work they might, however, be able to do something satisfactory towards it.

Mr. Allen, in reply: If he had an insufficient quantity of any sample, he certified that the quantity was insufficient for him to form an opinion.

He understood Mr. Norton to consider it of great importance that they should be able to distinguish between "hops" on the one side and "not hops" on the other; this, he believed, could be done with certainty, ease, and on a very moderate quantity of beer. As to the identification of the various hop substitutes he did not profess to be able to distinguish all, but he thought he could already positively recognize calumba, quassia, colocynth, and some other bitters, including picric acid and picrotoxin, and if the matter became important he believed in a year or two public analysts would have devised methods for the detection of the other bitters, just as they had conquered other analytical difficulties when the occasion arose.

From the above it, would appear that the lead method, which I employed, is considered by the English analysts as capable of deciding whether substitutes for hops have been used.

No action seems to have been taken as yet on the question of malt substitutes.