Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 01.djvu/174

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ADRIFT.
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ADULTERATION.

also the condition of a sail, gun, or other object which has broken loose from its fastenings.


ADUA, a'doo-a. See Adowa.


AD'UAT'UCI or AD'UAT'ICI. A people of Belgic Gaul, dwelling in Julius Cæsar's time near the River Sambre. and conquered by him 57 B.C. See his Bellum Gallicum, Book II. They were descended from survivors of the Cimbri and Teutones after their defeat by C. Marius, 102-101 B.C.


ADU'LE (Gk. Αδούλη, Adoulē) An ancient Ethiopian town on the Red Sea, near the modern Zula. It was an important trading post, especially for fine ivory. It is noted chiefly on account of an inscription of some importance relative to the ancient geography of those regions, the Monumentum Adulitanum, really two inscriptions, one celebrating the victories of Ptolemy Euergetes, the other the much later conquests of a native king. Both are of value for ancient geography, and were first published in the sixth century in the Topographia Christiana of Cosmos Indicopleustes.


ADUL'LAM. A city in the lowlands of Judea. which was the abode of a Canaanite king before the conquest of the country by the Israelites (See Joshua xii: 15), and continued to be an Inhabited town at least as late as the Maccabees. Its locality has been identified by some scholars with that of the modern Dier Dubban, some distance west of Bethlehem, and by others with that of Aid-el-ma, a few miles northeast of Hebron.


ADUL'LAM, Cave of. A cavern in southern Judaea, noted as a retreat of David while he was in hiding with his band of four hundred outlaws from King Saul (see I. Samuel xxii), and later when as king he was fighting the Philistines (I. Chronicles xi : 15). It was perhaps near the town of the same name, some ten miles northwest of Hebron.


ADUL’LAMITES. A term applied in English history to those seceding Liberals who voted with the Conservative party when Earl Russell and Mr. Gladstone sought to extend the elective franchise in 1866. The designation of Adullamites was fastened on the new party by Mr. Bright, who, in the course of debate, likened them to the political outlaws who took refuge with David in the cave of Adullam (I. Samuel xxii : 1, 2). The comparison was taken up by Lord Elcho, who humorously replied that the band congregated in the cave was hourly increasing, and would succeed in delivering the House from the tyranny of Saul (Mr. Gladstone) and his armor-bearer (Mr. Bright). The group of seceders was also known as "The Cave," and as "The Cave of Adullam."


ADUL'TERA'TION (Lat. adulterare, to defile, to falsify). The act of intentionally debasing articles offered for sale, by abstracting from them some valuable constituent, or by adding to them some worthless, more or less deleterious, foreign substance. Adulteration has been practiced throughout the civilized world since early in the Middle Ages, and unfortunately the methods and devices used by unscrupulous men of commerce in adulterating commodities in common use have kept pace with the progress of the useful arts. The immediate objects of adulteration are briefly as follows: (1) To increase the weight or the bulk of a given article; (2) to improve the appearance, especially the color, of a low-grade article and thereby to raise its apparent pecuniary value; (3) to impart to a low-grade article the flavor and other properties characteristic of a higher grade, though the quality of the given article may not thereby be really improved; (4) to abstract from a given article of good quality some valuable constituent without apparently lowering the value of the given article. Among the commodities often sold in an adulterated state may be mentioned milk, butter, cheese, bread and flour, confectionery products, coffee, tea, cocoa and chocolate, honey, jellies, mustard, pepper, cinnamon and other spices, ale and beer, wine and spirits, oils, vinegar, pickles, drugs, tobacco and snuff, textile fabrics, colors and dyes, etc.

The sale of a spurious article under the name of the genuine article for which it is intended to pass is a common-law cheat, and modern legislation is extending the scope of this crime with a view to the protection of health and the promotion of honest and fair business dealings. By selling an adulterated article under the ordinary commercial name, the seller breaks his contract and is bound to take the article back or pay damages, even though he may have been ignorant of the adulteration. The following are some of the common forms of adulteration and some of the simpler methods of detecting them.

Milk is adulterated mainly in two ways: by dilution with water and by withdrawal of cream. The addition of water may be detected by the use of the lactometer, a form of hydrometer used to determine rapidly the specific gravity of milk. The lowest normal specific gravity is of course known from a large number of experiments in which samples of undiluted milk have been examined with the lactometer. In using the lactometer it must be remembered that skim milk has a specific gravity considerably higher than whole milk; and if the lactometer indicates a normal specific gravity, while the milk has a watery appearance and taste, the conclusion is pretty safe that more or less cream has been removed from the milk. Skimming may also be detected by determining the opacity of milk with the aid of the apparatus called the lactoscope, the opacity being the greater the more cream is contained in the milk. In using the lactoscope, water is added to a layer of milk of a certain depth until some object, or a black line drawn on a white surface, becomes visible through it. The amount of water thus required depends, of course, on the opacity of the sample under examination, and hence shows how much cream is contained in the milk. The dilution of milk with water and the withdrawal of cream are doubtless among the important factors of infant mortality in large cities, and do unspeakable harm to the community in general. The nefarious practice of adding water is often aggravated by the fact that the water used is dangerously bad. Thus, in Paris milkmen have been caught using stale water from street fountains, and in New York, water-snakes, frogs, and all manner of dirt have been found in milk brought to the market. It is thus that milk may be a source of typhoid fever and of other dangerous diseases. On the other hand, skimmed milk contains a large amount of blood-making protein matter, and is, as a source of such matter, very cheap. Its sale under a proper label cannot, therefore, be objected to on any ground whatever. Of