purpose of producing a perfectly good and wholesome beer, barley is not an indispensable requisite. The brewer's manipulations in malting and brewing result primarily in the formation of diastase, and the cracking of the starch granules, which yield up their starch to the action of the first-named substance. This starch, as every one knows, or ought to know, is the principal substance of all the various kinds of grains. It is absolutely the same in all of them, whether in wheat, spelt, barley, rye, Indian corn, or rice. The action of diastase (at a proper temperature and in the presence of water) changes the starch (or granulose, technically speaking,) into sugar, or, to speak more correctly, into maltose and dextrine, no matter what kind of grain yielded the starch. If acid is allowed to act on starch it also forms dextrine and sugar, but in this case dextrose. A difference which in no conceivable manner affects the final result, so far as brewing is concerned; for although maltose and dextrose differ, they yield the same result from the action of yeast, namely alcohol and carbonic acid gas. No matter what saccharizing process the starch is subjected to, its product is invariably the same, viz.: unfermented dextrine, on the one hand, and alcohol and carbonic acid gas on the other. From this plain statement it must be evident to every singleminded person, that there is absolutely no difference, save in name, between the sugar obtained by the conversion of barley malt and that obtained by the conversion of, let us say, cornstarch-from which latter glucose or grape-sugar is manufactured. Now as diastase possesses the power of converting from 2,000 to 20,000 times its own weight of starch into maltose and dextrine, and as all malt contains one per cent. of diastase, it is possible for malt to convert starch, which contains no diastase, into sugar; and therefore unmalted rice, corn, cerealine, &c., can thus be converted and used, together with malt, in manufacturing beer.

To be as brief and concise as possible then: Alcohol, carbonic acid gas and extract are the three things which the brewer looks for, and must have, as the final result of his operations. These he derives from sugar, and as there is no difference whatever between the sugars of different origin-so far as the purposes

here referred to are concerned-it is entirely inessential from what kind of grain the sugar-yielding starch is obtained.

taste.

The use of sugar, other than that derived from barley starch, is not a question of cost, but rather a concession to popular Beer-drinkers nowadays demand light-colored beers of vinous flavor and strongly effervescent quality, and it is to cater to this taste that brewers employ other materials than barley malt, some of which are much dearer than barley, and would therefore not be used, if the question of cheapness were considered at all. In considering the question of adulteration, there is no need of entering into a discussion of the relative meritsfrom an economical point of view-of the use of the various sugars. It is sufficient to prove that the use, in brewing, of wheat, rice, Indian corn, rye, and glucose or grape-sugar is not an adulteration in the sense herein before quoted; that is to say, that it is not a corruption or debasement of beer by an admixture of baser materials. The proof, the correctness of which any chemist will readily certify to, lies in the fact that there is no difference, for brewing purposes, between the sugars mentioned which would in any manner justify the assertion that one material is baser than the other.

Very many people, whose judgment is clouded by zealotism, claim that the sugar obtained from corn is unhealthy. The highest scientific authority, the National Academy of Sciences, has long since published its conclusion that glucose or grapesugar, in all its forms, is as healthy as any other sugar, and numerous recognized chemical authorities have fully endorsed this conclusion. If the reader would but take the pains to compare what has been said in reference to the chemical transformations of barley with the following statement of the process of manufacturing glucose or grape-sugar, he would at once perceive that if sugar obtained from corn be unhealthy, that obtained from barley cannot be wholesome.

According to the result of an official examination, glucose or grape-sugar is manufactured as follows: "The starch is first obtained in a pure condition from the corn, then mixed with water, and the mixture is heated to boiling. Sulphuric acid is

added to the extent of about 2 per cent., and it is then boiled about three hours. The starch is by this time converted to sugar and dextrine, both of which are in solution. The free acid is then got rid of by the addition of chalk or marble dust, which, with the acid forms calcic sulphate, which settles to the bottom and leaves a clear supernatant fluid, which yields glucose or grapesugar and dextrine."

In 1882 the National Academy of Sciences, at the request of the Treasury Department, caused an investigation of glucose or grape-sugar, which was conducted by Prof. George F. Barker, of the University of Pennsylvania; Prof. William H. Brewer, of Yale College; Prof. Charles F. Chandler, of Columbia College; Prof. Wolcott Gibbs, of Harvard College; and Prof. Ira Remsen, of Johns Hopkins College, Maryland. The report on this investigation winds up with the following conclusions:

"First. That the manufacture of sugar from starch is a longestablished industry, scientifically valuable and commercially important.

Second. That the processes which it employs at the present time are unobjectionable in their character, and leave the product uncontaminated.

Third. That the starch sugar thus made and sent into commerce is of exceptional purity and uniformity of composition, and contains no injurious substances.

Fourth. That though having at best only about two-thirds the sweetening power of cane-sugar, yet starch-sugar is in no way inferior to cane-sugar in healthfulness, there being no evidence before the committee that maize starch-sugar, either in its normal condition or fermented, has any deleterious effect upon the system, even when taken in large quantities."

Dr. P. T. Austen, F. C. S., Professor of Chemistry at Rutgers College, and the New Jersey State Scientific Schools, says:

"There is not the slightest foundation for a suspicion that glucose is unhealthy; on the contrary, it is one of the healthiest substances known, and has always been, and will always be, one of the chief articles of human food. Every time we eat

ripe fruit, we eat grape-sugar, precisely the same as made from starch, except that one is made from starch by nature, and the other by human agency. Every time that we eat food containing starch, as potatoes, for instance, the digestive organs make grape-sugar out of it. Even in the mouth the change begins. Chew for a few minutes the end of a starched pocket-handkerchief, and it will soon begin to taste sweet, the ferment of the saliva turning the starch into glucose or grape-sugar. Surely no one could say that glucose can have an unwholesome effect on us, when it exists in our most favorite articles of food, and in those in which it does not exist in its pure state the digestive organs produce it. We see, therefore, that not only is glucose or grape-sugar a perfectly harmless article of food, but it is perhaps the most natural food that exists. It is a perfectly wholesome article of food, for, as I have stated, the grape-sugar from starch is the same as that existing in nature in fruit, and is an established article of food. Professor Chandler, President of the New York Board of Health, says, in speaking of these syrups in Johnson's Encyclopedia, one or two establishments prepare a syrup made by combining sugar-house molasses with glucose prepared from Indian corn, which is entirely harmless.”

Professor E. S. Wayne of Cincinnati, under date of March 3, 1882, wrote on the same subject as follows:

"Glucose or grape-sugar has of late been the subject of several communications from Washington, commenting upon the article as one of serious danger to the health of the people, and besides a substance mainly or to a great extent used with fraudulent intent. The above are very grave charges to make against a substance so harmless as grape-sugar, and, emanating from Washington, and published in the papers of the land, are well calculated to injure and cripple an industry that has grown to be a very large one.

Glucose or grape-sugar is simply starch, changed by chemical agency into a variety of sugar; starch made soluble and saccharine in taste, a change which to digest in the stomach it must undergo. Through chemical agency this change is made by the

chemist outside of the stomach, and the starchy matter converted, so to speak, into a new, palatable, nutritious food, comparable to that of ordinary cane-sugar, and as harmless. The charges made above are against an article that has been long in use in France and Germany, nations famous for the strict scrutiny with which they examine and test all articles sold for food. It would seem strange that they have not discovered the unhealthy character of it and forbidden its sale. I am not aware of any such restraint upon the sale of it either in France or Germany. Nor have I read of any acute or chronic ailment resulting from its use in this country. I read and have access to most of the medical, chemical, and pharmaceutical journals, published abroad as well as in the United States, but do not remember of having read of the deleterious effects of glucose in any of them.

Such being the character of glucose or grape-sugar, composed of organic matter as with sugar, and a substance that we have partaken of all our lives in the fruits we eat, the jellies, pies and tarts (to say nothing of the starchy food we eat, and which is changed to glucose during digestion), it cannot be the dangerous substance it is represented to be. I have analyzed two specimens of glucose or grape-sugar from goods on sale in the market here, and find that they both contain an exceedingly small part of substances other than glucose or grape-sugar, and these, upon analysis, I find to be very harmless substances, such as sulphate of lime, sulphate of magnesia, oxide of iron, and traces of phosphate of lime. In 10,000 parts of one sample of glucose or grape-sugar I find .0032 per cent. of ash, and in the other sample I find in same quantity .0018 per cent. ash, a quantity too small to have the slightest injurious effect upon any one. And all of them are in articles we partake of daily in our food."

In their sixth annual report (1886) the State Board of Health of New York, referring to recent beer analyses (which proved all examined beers to be perfectly pure and wholesome) says:

"A good deal has been written about the deleterious nature of glucose, and the evils resulting from its use in the brewing of beer, which examination shows to be much exaggerated. The