Beer - or to call it by the name that is at present more en vogue, Lager - consists, or at least ought to consist, of a fermented extract of malt and hops. While in the first quarter of this century this healthy and agreeable beverage used to be prepared often enough from a mixture containing many violent poisons, as Indian hemp, opium, sulphuric acid, sulphate of iron, etc. - nay, the addition of strychnia, even, was suspected - the principal adulterations of it, at the present time, consist of water, to increase the bulk of the fluid, and burnt sugar and salt, to restore in a measure its color and flavor. The addition of water does not render beer injurious, but it cheats people out of their money. Burnt sugar, or treacle, was extensively employed, with the view of increasing the dark color of porter, stout, or other heavy beers; the ingredient known as essentia bina, formerly used in the manufacture of beer, consisted of moist sugar boiled in an iron vessel until it had become syrupy, perfectly black, and extremely bitter.

The acidity in beer is very desirable; it depends, probably, on the presence of malic and lactic acid. In many cases, however, acetic acid, or vinegar, is formed in beer from a decomposition of excessive fermentation of its sugar; the beverage is then very sour, and unfit for use. There is some reason to believe that sulphuric acid is occasionally used to give astringency to beer, in which case the addition of chloride of barium to the liquor will cause the formation of a bulky precipitate insoluble in nitric acid. Sulphate of iron was, and probably is still, employed for restoring the flavor of beer. Should this chemical be present in an alcoholic beverage, by adding ammonia and sulphide of ammonium to the fluid a black precipitate will be produced.

More recently, trials have been made to substitute picric acid instead of hops; beer prepared in this way is nothing but a solution of glucose, augmented or rather spiced with picric acid. Taste by itself fails in helping us to distinguish the presence of this acid, but Lassaigne gave us the means of detecting even the slightest proportions of said acid in beer. By shaking good, unadulterated beer with an excess of pulverized burned bone-dust it loses all its color, as the powder absorbs all the dyestuffs; but when doing the same with beer adulterated by addition of picric acid, it will not lose its yellowish tint.

It would be a great comfort to all beer-drinkers to know that such adulterations belong to the past; but, though sorry to say so, we are of the opinion of old Dr. Faust: " It's true the message I do hear, yet I cannot believe it."