Professor Mayer in 1883 made some experiments as to the digestibility and wholesomeness of butterine as compared with dairy butter. The experiments were made on two healthy male subjects; and the conclusion arrived at was, that there is not much difference between the digestibility of butterine and that of dairy butter. As to eggs or germs existing in butterine, whereby disease may be spread, there is as yet, happily, no instance on record. As far as nutritive qualities go, it stands on very nearly the same level as butter.
We learn that an Act was passed, April 24, 1884, by the Senate of New York prohibiting the fabrication of any article out of margarine substances, intended to replace butter and cheese. A fine of one hundred dollars is attached to the breaking of the Act. In the preliminary inquiry made by a Committee, it is stated that twenty out of the thirty samples bought as dairy butter were proved to be butterine. The quantity of butterine manufactured and sent into the State of New York was estimated at forty million pounds annually. The ordinary butter, except the very best grades, was spoken of as rapidly disappearing from the market. One witness testified that something between one hundred and fifty and two hundred thousand packages of butterine, of fifty-five pounds each, were shipped at New York in 1882; and between two hundred and two hundred and fifty thousand packages in 1883. Another witness said that the gross receipts of the genuine butter-trade in New York are fifty per cent. less than what they would be but for the sale of butterine as butter.
The passing of this Act is virtually a granting of protection for the American dairy industry, and gives effect to the voice of so far interested parties. Butterine has fared much better at the hands of scientific men. Sir Lyon Playfair, Sir Frederick J. Bramwell, Sir F. Abel, Dr James Bell, and others, none of whom are in any way interested in its manufacture, have given a favourable verdict regarding butterine, looking upon it as a boon to the working population. Dr James Bell, in a paper read at the International Health Exhibition, said that butterine and oleo-margarine are, in the opinion of high authorities, legitimate articles of commerce, when honestly sold, and if made in a cleanly manner from sound fats, as they afford the poor a cheap and useful substitute for butter, especially during the winter months, when good butter is both scarce and dear.
Professor Odling, who presided at a meeting of the London Society of Arts, when a paper was read by Mr Anton Jurgens, in December 1884, on this subject, is of the same opinion. Mr Jurgens said that the total exports from Holland alone, in 1883, amounted to about forty thousand tons, valued at about three million pounds sterling. The greatest care was taken in its manufacture to promote cleanliness and excellence. No tainted fat could possibly be used: the smallest portion of bad fat would contaminate the whole mass. The Lancet has said that butterine is better and cheaper than much of the common butter sold. Mr Jurgens is of the same opinion; and he also said that, owing to its composition, butterine does not become rancid, but retains its sweetness longer than butter. This was owing to the absence of butyrin, which gives the aroma to fresh butter, but causes it soon to become rank.
Dr Mouton says that the Dutch manufacturers strongly desire to have this product imported under its own name, and he questions whether a single package is introduced under a false one. Dutch butterine, when made from the best materials, cannot easily be distinguished from dairy butter; but when made from bad materials, it is easily discerned, and no consumer could be imposed upon by it. He says further, that the English market is the most particular one with which they have to deal. Denmark is the only European state where particular regulations are in force with regard to the manufacture, sale, and import of butterine. In France, a bill for this purpose has been drafted; in the other European states, the import of margarine and butterine seems to be considered as a public boon.
Time, which tests all things, will also test butterine. Professor Odling, speaking as a physician, says that a cheap and inexpensive fat is a great want with many young children, and that butterine supplies this want. We find that butterine can be sold at a profit, for the different qualities, at from eightpence to one-and-fourpence per pound. When, as we have already seen, it is made from good materials, it is wholesome and nourishing; and considering the demands of our vast population in this respect—our imports of butter and butterine last year amounting in value to twelve and a half millions sterling—who shall say that butterine may not have a useful future before it? Let it, however, be called butterine, and honestly sold as such.
THAT FATAL DIAMOND.
A THIEF’S CONFESSION.
I am the most unhappy man that ever occupied a prison cell. I say this advisedly, knowing that hundreds are at this moment bewailing their fate, which in many cases may seem harder than mine; but it is not, if they still retain the self-respect which I have lost. That’s what tortures me; my prestige is gone; I am degraded in my own eyes; I despise myself as heartily as the most virtuous man in the world could. That I, to whom half the thieves in London have looked for guidance, should myself have laid a plot for myself and walked into it! It is too humiliating! To fall a victim to a too powerful combination of adverse circumstances is no disgrace; to be outwitted by the superior finesse of the police is hard, but endurable; but to fall into a snare which should not have misled a boy who had never stolen so much as a handkerchief in his life—this, this is shame!
It was that diamond ring that did it. I really think some special ill-luck must have attached to the trinket, for it brought no good to its previous possessor. It was hardly in the regular way of business that it came into my hands—just as it has escaped from them in a most unbusiness-like fashion. That young man must have been in great straits before he united himself to me in the business of stealing his uncle’s cash-box, in order to obtain funds to pay his gambling debts. It was a very easy matter for me. He was to mix a few drops of an opiate I gave him with his relative’s brandy-and-water one evening, and leave the hall-door open; I had only to walk in and take up the booty he had collected and placed ready for me. It was a very fair collection of plate that awaited me as well as the coveted cash-box; but I am fond of jewellery, and the house was so beautifully asleep, that I could not resist creeping up to the master’s bedroom to see if there was not in it a trifle worth picking up. There was—the diamond ring, and a rather good set of studs. I took them, and slipped out of the room so quietly that I should not have disturbed their owner, even if my young friend had not, by way of making sure, doubled the prescribed dose of the opiate, and thereby plunged his uncle into, not sleep, but death. Poor young fellow! the knowledge that he had killed a relation who had always treated him with kindness, if also with severity, was too much for his mind, which doubtless was never strong. Those debts of honour were never paid; he never came to claim his share of that night’s spoil; and I have heard that the distant cousin who, failing him, inherited the old man’s property, grumbles greatly at having to pay for his being kept in a lunatic asylum.