THE ANALPST. 181 ABSTRACT OF A LECTURE ON THE ADULTmATION OF HONEY, BY OTTO BEIiNElt, F.I.C., AT THE CONFERENCE OF THE REE- KEEPEI.38’ ASSOOIATIONS. A F T Z R ~ U ~ ~ ~ entering into the chemical composition of honey, all of which is perfectly familiar to our readers, the Lecturer said :- Thus water, dextroghcose and levoglucose, constitute by far the greater bulk and weight of honey. But the bee carries away from the flower other constituents, less in quantity but by no means in importance, and incorporates them in the honey. Acci- dentally, perhaps, but none the less invariably, a great number of pollen granules find their way into the comb, and these in their turn carry with it the odour and aroma peculiar to each flower. Minute amounts of colouring matters are dissolved from the pollen and give honeys from different flowers the innumerable shades of yellow, green, and brown with which every bee-keeper is familiar.Thus honey from white clover is practically devoid of colour ; that from sainfoin is yellow ; from lirnes, more or less green ; from betma, brown ; from marshy heaths, almost black. Par greater still is the variety of flavours and odours. Every conceivable aroma, lovely and delicate as that of the flowers themselves-sometimes, I must acknowledge, also repulsive and unpleasant -is met with, and the practised observer can, without much difficulty, conclude from this from what End of blossom the bulk of any given sample of honey is derived. More characteristic still is the size and shape of the pollen. Infinite varieties, each characteristic of a particular genus or class of plant, can be seen in honey, and a glance through the microscope is froquently sufficient to ascertain with a great amount of accuracy the name of the plant from which the honey is derived.From the vcry vltriablo amount of pollen granules met with in different honeys- Bome saruplcs which I have examined containing enormous numbers, others but very182 THE ANALY0T. few-there appears to be a considerable difference in the degree of cleanliness with which bees store the honey. Borne flowers yieId an infinitely larger number of pollen granules than others, but the importation of the latter to a greater or less extent into the honey itself appears to me to depend mainly upon the bee itself. There are three classea of manufactured honey : first, honey made from ordinmy sugar, and essentially consisting of cane-sugar syrup ; eewnd, that obtained by the action of an mid upon cane sugar, and consisting, as does genuine honey, of water, dextro and levoglucose j and third, the product of the action of acid upon starch, called corn syrup.I have never met with any samples of the fist of these three dams, and I doubt whether any such article can now-a-days be found, although in older works on adulteration their occurrence is aseerted. The second kind is also very rare, but yet it exists j but the third, starch syrup, is the main substitute and adulterant used at the present time. The characteristics of these articles compared with those of pure, natural honey, are as follows :-A solution of pure honey in water, when boiled with one of a salt of copper which has been rendered caustic by the addition of potash, deposits a precipitate of red suboxide of copper, 100 parts of honey thus yieIding about 197 parts of precipitate. Neither by the addition of alcohol, nor of lead acetate, nor of barium chloride, should a aolution of honey be rendered perceptably turbid.Subjected to fermentation by the addition of yeast, prmtically the whole of the aacoharine material should be decomposed, and transformed into dmhol and carbonio acid. And lastly, a ten-per-cent. Solution of pure honey, when examined in an instrument called a polariscope, should have no per- ceptible action upon yolarised light. If anything, it may turn the polariaed ray very slightly to the left. (lane-sugar syrup agrees in its dhemioal behaviour with real honey, inasmuch as it doen not yield precipitates with alcohol, salts of lead, or barium, and is also completely fexmentable.It differs essentially from it, inasmuch as it does not give with the alkaline copper of solution alluded to a deposit of red suboxide at all, or only a much smaller proportion than that holding good with honey. Its ten-per-cent. solution turns the polarised ray of light powerfully to the right. Cane sugar which has, by treatment with an acid-sulphuric or tarrtaric-been made into dextro and levoglucose, is praoticdy identical with honey sugar, and as such exhibits precisely the same characters does genuine honey. I t e origin, however, betrays itself by the traces of acid which always remain mixed with it, and which cause precipitates either with lead or barium solutions, or with both.Corn or starch-syrup, lastly, differs in almost every respect from the genuine product. It throvs down abundant precipitates with lead or barium solutions, often with alcohol ; it does not ferment completely, but leavea about one-fifth or one-sixth of its weight as unfermentable, gummy residue, and examined by the polariscope, twns the ray of light powerfully to the right. Theso few simple testR readily enable us to distinguish these products from each other, and from honey. Examined with the mictroscope they all are fouud to be devoidTHE ANALYST. 183 of pollen ; and, in consequence, are without the delicate aroma, the bouquet, which is inseparable from the product of the flower and the bee.By far the inost common of these kinds of adulterations is starch sugar, and this for several reasons, The price of starch is lower than that of my other available carbohy- drate, and this kind of sugar is, for other and more legitimate purposes, manufactured on a very large scale. Since all restrictions on the preparation of ale or other so-called malt beverages have been done away with, and the tax is levied only on the strength or gravity of the liquor before it is fermented, it is found to be more economical to convert starch of rice or maize into fermentable sugar by means of acid, than by the aid of malt diastase, and the trade in brewing sugar has correspondingly increased. But the main reason is the very close rosernblance to genuine honey of syrups made from starch sugar.They do not readily crystallise, and are devoid of the overpowering sweetness of cane sugar. In America, especially, the production of starch sugar has been developed to perfection, and even as substitute and adulterant of cane sugar the article is used to a large extent, although the very low price of cane sugar must militate not a little against adulteration of any kind. As was to be expected, ccrn syrup is actually most frequently found in honeys imported from America, although Switzerland is striving hard to carry off the ‘‘ honour ” attached to the production of artificial honey. Of forty-two samples of honey obtained by purchase from retail dealers, partly by myself, partly by Mr.J. M. Hooker, of the Bee-keepers’ Association, twenty-six were avowedly EngliBh, nine American, four Swiss, two French, and one Transylvanian. Twenty-four of the English samples were undoubtedly genuine,and two (which I have very good reason to believe of American origin, although vended as English) were adulterated with corn syrup. Of the nine American and Californian samples, seven were adulterated -namely, six with corn syrup, and one with inverted cane sugar ; whilst of the four Swiss Bamples not one was genuine. The two French and the Transylvanian samples were pure. The most satisfactory part of these results is the freedom of English honeys from adulteration. As far as my experience goes, there exists no regular English factory of spurious honey; ouly where the American element asserts itself corn syrup may be suepectod.As to Swiss honey, I have seen it stated, in corroboration of my results, that every exporter-otherwise manufacturer-of Swiss honey adds to the natural pro- duct a more or less considerable quantity of starch syrup, the alleged philanthropical object being to obey the desire of the public for clear and uncrystallisable honey, pur- chasers being credited with the belief that pure and genuine honey is always clear aud fluid. In mitigation it is urged, that honey from Switzerland is not sold as “ genuine honey,” but as “ Swiss honey ! ” I find that the price is no indication whatever of the genuineness of the article. Some of the “ Swiss table honeys ” cost, retail, 1s. 3d. per llb. jar ; Engli~h honey of perfect purity is to be met with at 3d.and 6d. per Ib. Of course, perfect.ly pure and genuine American and Swiss honeys do exist. Bees a11 over tho world appear to secrete similar honey, just as I have ascertained, as the184 THE ANALYST. ~~ ~ ~~ ~~ result of an extended investigation into the nature and composition of wax, that that product is of perfectly uniform composition, no matter by what kind of bees or in what. part of the world it may have beenproduced. But seeing that the chances of obtaining pure honey are much greater in the case of English than in some of the foreign supplies which I have named, I cannot but think that lovers of honey would do well to eschew the foreign product until a decided change for the better has taken place in the commercial morality of the vendors, and be content with that gathered from British fields and pastures.The adoption of anything but the plain name of honey carries to me, after the experience above detailed, the suspicion that the article designated by a name more or less qualified or fanciful is not genuine. Thus I have acquired, and hope to impart it to you, a suspicion against “honey-dew,” “table honey,” ‘( prepared fortable use,” or “finest prepared table honey,’’ because I have found, that just as good wine needs no bush, so good honey needs no fancy name. These names and qualifications do not convey to the purchaser the simple plain fact that the article is adulterated. They may ease the manu- facturers’ elastic conscience, as disguised declarations that the honeys so designated are not in the same state as they left the hive. But I think they would not for a minute be held to be valid declarations, required by lam, of the mixed nature of these com- pounds.Chemistry during the last fifty-or shall I say thirty ?-years has made enormous strides. It has enabled us to obtain a fairly clear insight into the working of life pro- cesses, both vegetable and animal, to understand the composition of organic matters, and to trace their thousand-fold changes in living organisms. It has broken down the barriers which not so long ago were considered insurmountable, dividing the living from the dead creation. It has euabled us to make artificially, from the very elements, substances formerly intimately associated with life-action, and almost every day new organic substances are added to the already long list of those which are the result of laboratory work.But so far only chemical compounds of comparative simplicity have been the result, and in not a single case has any complex product, such as is used for food by man or beast, been obtained. Indeed, with all the enormous amount of research and experiment we only stand on the threvhold of red knowledge of organic life; we only see the rough outlines of the composition of living things. We know That the bulk of their components is made of, but in the case of food substances it happens that their value, and above all their price, generally stands in no direct relation to their composition. A cargo of manure, or of some metallic ore, pos- sesses n value which bears a direct relation to the percentage of phosphoric acid or of metal which by analysis can be ascertained to be contained in it.A load of oil cake or other cattle food generally has both a feeding and a money value, directly proportioned .to the amount of oil and of albuminous compounds which can be extracted h m them. A vater supply depends on quality strictly upon its composition. But the case is vastly different in that of most food materials used by man. Composition, as ascertainable by chemical mnlysis, goes for very little ; pualzty, which is dependent upon circumstances beyond the present ken of the chemist, goos for a great deal. Wine, for instance, con-THE ANALYST. 185 sists essentially of dilute alcohol, slightly acid, and more or less coloured.But whilst a good bottle of wine may fetch-and be worth-say five, or ten, or more shillings, I hnva yet tQ taste the first sample of artificially coloured and dilute alcohol, slightly acid, which should be worth even a shilling per bottle. A pound of tea has no more food value than a pound of sloe or withered leaves, but who would pay for the latter, say, throe shillings, which the tea is readily worth ? And so on with almost every article of food or of luxury. The value is not a question of the composition o€ the bulk of the article, but is regulated by the presence or absence ’of exceedingly minute amounts of flavouring matters, of which we know little or nothing art all. The dif€erence between good and bad wine, or tea, or meat, is so small that the most subtle analysis generally fails to detect it.Aud as in the case of these articles, so it is with honey. We prize honey, not because it consists of some sugar or other and water, but because it possesses a delicate flavour and aroma which is absent from, and cannot by any means at present known be given to, any artificially made syrup. Were the taste of the public educated for honey in anything like the same degree as it is in for tea, wine, or other articles of every-day consumption, no one would venture to palm 03 arti- ficial syrups for real honey. As well might a butcher offer his customers leather instead of meat, the composition of both being nearly identical. It is possible that, as far as mere food value is concerned, the substitute is as good as the original article.Sugar, whether taken in the shape of cane sugar, starch sugar, or honey, produces the same proportion of heat and muscular energy. Butterine or oleomargarine, when burnt or digested, produces no less, if not more heat, than does butter. Yet butter holds its own against its substifxtes, partly on account of its deli- caay of flavour, and it8 much more ready digestibility. Some experiments recently made with starch sugar syrup point towards the similar difference between it and honey, in favour of the natural product. Bees refuse, as long as they are able, to feed upon corn syrup ; when driven by sheer necessity to take it, they soon die OP diarrhma. This fact should make us at least pause in giving a definite opinion as to the relative food values of the two products. There can be no question that the Sale of Bood and Drugs Act, at present in force, is as perfectly capable to operate against spurious honey as it is against other articles which are (( not of the substance, nature, and quality demanded.” 3ut yet, as far as I am aware, it has never been put into motion against manufacturers of honey.” About 180,000 samples have been analysed by public analysts since the Act is in force, but 1 have not heard of a single prosecution in the case of spurious honey.It is not the fault of the analysts, who have absolutely nothing to do with the collection and purchase of samples. The growing evil of substituting a manufactured article for the genuine pro- duct presses especially heavy against the English producers, because the public seem to prefer honey derived nominally from fragrant Alpine herbs, but practically from potatoes and sulphmic acid, or from some mythical Californian bee-farms, to that collected from English hedgerows and meadows.But this evil is not yet recognised by the general public; the taste for honey is not educated; my syrup is eaten as honey, provided it looks transparent and is contained in n neat bottle and boaats of a fine label. As 80022186 THE ANALYST. as there is a demand for really good, delicately flavoured honey, aud the Sale of Food Act is put into operation at the initiative of the public, corn syrup will bo a thing of the past. In order to aid in this desirable education of the public taste, I would recommend that whenever practicable, bee-keepers should state on the labels of the honey they sell from what kind of flower the bulk of the product is derived. Clover honey, lime honey, or heather honey, for instance, are quite as distinct in their characters as are Burgundy, Ehenish, or Moselle wines; but yet, while no one mould purchase any wine without distinctly stating the specific variety which he desires, a11 kinds and sorts of honey are sold without any explanatory designation. Of course, from the nature of the article and its collection it is impossible, in many instances, to state its precise derivation, but when- ever practicable this should be done. The British Bee-keepers’ Association, which either directly or by means of its country branches has done so much to raise and encourage scientific bee-culture, could readily induce its members in this manner to aid in educating the consumers of honey.