Chapter XLI: Section 8: ``No person shall be guilty of any such offence

as aforesaid in respect to the sale of an article of food or a drug mixed with any matter or ingredient not injurious to health, and not intended fraudulently to increase its bulk, weight or measure, or conceal its inferior quality, if at the time of delivering such article or drug he shall supply to the person receiving the same a notice, by a label distinctly and legibly written or printed on or with the article or drug, to the effect that the same is mixed.'' The act made the appointment of analysts compulsory upon the city of London, the vestries, county quarter sessions and town councils or boroughs having a separate police establishment. For the protection of the vendor, samples that had been purchased by the inspectors for analysis were to be offered to be divided into three parts, one to be submitted to the analyst, the second to be given to the vendor to be dealt with by him as he might deem fit, and the third to be retained by the inspector: and, at the discretion of the magistrate hearing any summons, to be submitted, in case of dispute, to the commissioners of inland revenue for analysis by the chemical laboratory at Somerset House. The public analyst had to give a certificate, couched in a prescribed form, to the person submitting any sample for analysis, which certificate was to be taken as evidence of the facts therein stated, in order to render the proceedings as inexpensive as practicable. If the defendant in any prosecution could prove to the satisfaction of the court that he had purchased the article under a warranty of genuineness, and that he sold it in the same state as when he purchased it, he was to be discharged from the prosecution, but no provision was made that in that event the giver of the warranty should be proceeded against.

1879.