Brighouse & Rastrick Gazette. — 1892-03-19 (Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England)

DAIRY PRODUCE.  It will, says a Field correspondent, be scarcely credited, yet the value of the produce of the dairy in this country is considerably more than the value of all our corn crops, or any other branch of agriculture, with the exception of meat. Mr. Howard, in his estimate, put the value of the corn crops at £36,000,000, and of dairy produce at £42,000,000. Margarine, which, as compared with butter, is an inferior and less digestible fat, is gradually increasing its sale and its price; while butter is gradually decreasing in price, if we except a few of the very best home brands. It was stated, too, in the French Chamber, that the retail sale of margarine was practically nil, whilst the production of it was enormous; and that whereas from six to seven million kilogrammes were exported as margarine, the rest was mixed with butter and entirely lost sight of. In one American State—New Hampshire—margarine must be coloured pink; while in two States the law punishing the use of a margarine blend extends to hotels and boardinghouses. In this country any colouring of a mixture to make it resemble butter should be prohibited; and the admixture of butter with any other fat should be prohibited; and the law should extend to hotels, restaurants, eating-houses, and boardinghouses. It, however, is much more to the purpose to maintain that any new law must be really carried out, for the existing law, little use as it is, is now practically a dead letter throughout the greater part of the country. That the consumers are easily deceived cannot be disputed. The following fact, a very common one, relates to butter:imported by a large English house from Germany, and thousands of casks of butter are weekly sold in two counties alone of the same quality as that referred to in the analysis below. This being the case, the unscrupulous butter dealer has only to buy or to prepare butters containing a high percentage of water, and of salt, if that is agreeable to the customer, to make an unfair profit. How much water butter should normally contain is a matter of dispute—it varies considerably in good samples; but there will be a consensus of opinion with regard to the follow. ing figures, that the proportion of water is enormous. Butter fat, 72.75 per cent.; casein, 1.75 per cent. ; salt, 4.45 per cent. ; water, 21.05 per cent. ; total, 100 per cent. Here, then, the purchaser gets less than 110 z. of pure butter fat in every pound he purchases. Surely, therefore, it is time that the law stepped in to deal with the butter trade, to frame a standard of analysis, and to insist on its maintenance.  Nothing has transpired, says a Vienna correspondent, to give the police any clue to the murderers of the sacristan of St. Stephen's Cathedral, and it is feared that the crime will prove one more addition to the list of appalling murders committed during the last few weeks, the perpetrators of which still remain undiscovered. The latest theory of the dime is that robbery was the motive of the murder, but that the amassin was suddenly scared and hurriedly (-leaped without securing hie booty.