TO EVADE THE CUSTOMS

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8294, 24 September 1903, Page 4

TO EVADE THE CUSTOMS

' The false marking of goods imported into Great Britain is mildly termed "erratic'' by the Principal Chemist of the Government laboratory in his annual report to the Treasury issued lately. He says that the descriptions of ■ imports in the merchants entries often "give no clue whatever to the real nature of the goods." For examgle, crushed bones entered as "Semolina," Formaldehyde as "acetic acid," fruit juice as "tinned fish," gingerbread as "paints," peas as "cabbage seeds" and "bulbs,' sodium peroxide as "fancy goods," varnish as "iron goods," whilst "machinery" and razor "strops" turned out to be tobacco fumigating powder and sugar-coated pills respectively. During the year ended 51st March last 61,442 analyses and tests were made in the Customs branch and 83,370 in the Excise branch of the laboratory. A sample of a substitute for hops was found to contain 35 grains of oxide of antimony per pound. An inquiry was instituted, and it was elicited that a Midland chemist, by wnom the mixture was prepared, used a large quantity of oxide of antimony in making "horse powders," and that this material.somehow found its way into the hops substitute. The principal chemist gives the amount of tobacco cleared for home consumption in the years ending March 31 from 1841 to 1903. In the former year, when the population numbered 26,700,000, there was consumed over 10,310 tons, or 13£oz per head; in 1903, with a population of 42,287,000, the consumption was nearly 36,228 tons, or lib 14|oz per head. During th© year 256 samples of butter were examined. Boric acid preservative was present in 98 of the samples from Australia and Belgium, 86 per cent, of the French samples, 78 percent, of those from New Zealand, 77 per cent, of the South American samples, 45 per cent, of those from Holland!, and 43 per cent, of the samples from the United States. Sixteen per cent, of the Canadian samples contained this preservative, and of the other samples only 1 per cent, of the Danish and Russian samples, 2 per cent, of the Norwegian, and 10 per cent, of the German samples conuaned it.