Probably there is no one article of daily consumption that has been so often subject to suspicion of adulteration or sophistication as beer. Its complex composition and peculiar nature have deceived people into making all sorts of charges against its purity, but experience has failed to establish the truth of by far the greater majority of these charges, and the facts of many published analyses show that it is as free from adulteration as most other articles of consumption, and more so than some. Here comes in the question, so difficult to answer in this country, of what constitutes adulteration or sophistication of an article of food? The definition of what shall constitute a pure malt liquor is hard to settle. Even in Europe, where a much stricter supervision is kept over foodstuffs than here, the definition varies widely. In Bavaria, where more beer per capita is consumed than in any other country, the laws limit the materials from which it is made to barley, malt, hops, yeast, and water, while in England the comprehensive definition has been given to beer as being "a fermented saccharine infusion to which a wholesome bitter has been added."1