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Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

The question whether grape juice may or may not be preserved with sulphur dioxide is one which arises occasionally as a result of a certain ambiguity in the wording of the First Schedule of the Regulations. It is not a matter of opinion, as some would hold, but a matter of law, and, as such, should be fully appreciated by the legal advisers of local authorities, if not by Public Analysts. Item 4 of the First Schedule of the Regulations states that “Unfermented grape juice and non‐alcoholic wine made from such grape juice if labelled in accordance with the rule contained in the Second Schedule to these Regulations” may contain 2,000 parts of benzoic acid per million of grape juice and does not admit of the presence of the addition of any sulphur dioxide. The Second Schedule prescribes that, if the proportion of benzoic acid present in grape juice exceeds 600 parts per million, it shall be labelled with a declaration to that effect and also with the words “and is not intended for use as a beverage.” Item 5 of the First Schedule of the Regulations states that “Other non‐alcoholic wines, cordials and fruit juices, sweetened or unsweetened” may contain either 350 parts of sulphur dioxide per million parts of preparation or 600 parts per million of benzoic acid. Normally one would infer from this that grape juice to be used as a beverage falls under Item 5 of the Regulations, but that, if for some special reason it is not to be so used, it is permitted to contain up to 2,000 parts per million of benzoic acid provided that it is labelled to the effect that it is not to be used as a beverage. It should be noted that Item 4 does not read that grape juice and non‐alcoholic wine made from it may contain 600 parts per million of benzoic acid, but that, if labelled in accordance with the rules contained in the Second Schedule, it may contain 2,000 parts of this preservative. If grape juice were only allowed to contain benzoic acid as a preservative and if sulphur dioxide were prohibited under all circumstances one would have thought that Item 4 of the First Schedule would have been drawn up to indicate this, but no such indication is given at all. At the time that the Preservatives Regulations were issued it was fully recognised that sulphur dioxide was employed as a preservative in grape must. Whilst the Departmental Committee was considering the matter of preservatives and colouring matters the Ministry of Health issued a Report on Public Health Subjects, No. 24, entitled “Report on the Composition of Commoner British Wines and Cordials (Alcoholic and Non‐alcoholic),” by Dr. G. C. Hancock, C.B.E., one of the Medical Officers of the Ministry, together with a Report by the Government Chemist on the Examination of Samples. In the introduction Dr. G. Newman, the Chief Medical Officer to the Minister of Health, writes : “The most important of these materials are preservatives, and Dr. Hancock mentions the considerations which underlie the use of these substances in the manufacture of British wines and cordials. As, however, the question of preservatives and colouring matters in foods is being considered by a Departmental Committee of the Ministry he has made no specific recommendations relating to the use of these substances.” On page 4 at the end of the sixth paragraph Dr. Hancock refers to grape juice or must and says : “It is sent here in a highly concentrated form and is usually ‘sulphured,’ i.e., treated with sulphur dioxide in order to inhibit fermentation during transit.” Among other information placed at the disposal of the Departmental Committee was Dr. Hancock's report and in the Final Report of the Committee, also issued in 1924, paragraph 57 states: “Sulphurous acid and sulphites are extensively used in beer and alcoholic wines, to some smaller extent in non‐alcoholic beverages, and in preserving fruits and fruit juices, dried fruits, gelatine and sausages. … In the case of beer, wines, fruit and fruit juices the introduction comes partly from the treatment of the vessels of preparation and storage, partly from the materials used and partly from the actual addition of preservative in the course of manufacture or treatment for storage.” When considering the question of alcoholic wines, Foreign and British in detail, the Committee stated their opinion in the following words (para. 144): “Foreign and British wines are by no means closely related products. The former are the naturally fermented produce of the grape, while the latter are rarely derived from fresh fruit and are far more commonly prepared from a basis of dried fruits, rhubarb or imported grape must, fermented after the addition of sugar and flavouring materials, such as dried ginger‐root, orange peel, alcoholic essences or foreign wines. Considered from the point of view of preservatives, however, they have two features in common, (a) that the alcoholic content is very similar in each, (b) that sulphur dioxide is the preservative which is usually favoured (in addition to the alcohol present) to prevent secondary and other undesirable fermentations and sourness.” Instead of making any suggestion that the use of sulphur dioxide should be prohibited in grape must, the Committee draw their conclusion in paragraph 147 in the following words : “Our conclusion is that while in general preservatives should be unnecessary in alcoholic wines of ordinary strength, there may be circumstances which render the entire elimination of preservatives impracticable for the present. We think, however, that no other preservatives than sulphur dioxide should be permitted, and that this substance should not be present in amounts exceeding 3 grains of sulphur dioxide free and combined per pint (343 milligrams per litre).” This recommendation was adopted in the Draft Statutory Order issued in February, 1925, but, when the final Order was published, the quantity of sulphur dioxide permitted had been increased to 450 parts per million, making the law in this country agree with that already adopted in France. The recommendation made by the Departmental Committee was put forward after the Committee had commented on the fact that British wines are largely prepared from “imported grape must.” It seems remarkable that the Committee should have expressed the opinion that sulphur dioxide is used for sulphuring the casks, that sulphur dioxide is permitted in the completed wine, if it is not allowed to be present at intermediate stages, and that a Regulation was made by which benzoic acid only could be present in the unfermented grape juice, if this is not permitted to be present in the fermented alcoholic wine. When benzoic acid has once been added it cannot be eliminated and, as recognised by the Departmental Committee, benzoic acid is undesirable from the fermentation aspect. Had there been any intention to prohibit the presence of sulphur dioxide in unfermented grape juice, the Regulations would have rung the death‐knell to the manufacture of British wines, which have been produced in increasing volume during the last twenty years. Further, if there had been any intention to prohibit the addition of sulphur dioxide to grape juice, one cannot but express surprise that the importation of such juice has not been suppressed long ago by the Customs Authorities, since Section 8 (1) of the Regulations lays the responsibility for the control of Imported Articles of Food on the Officers of Customs and Excise and, through them, on the Government Chemist. The failure of the Government Chemist to condemn grape must containing sulphur dioxide cannot be due to his ignorance of its presence because the chemical analyses for Dr. Hancock's Report were carried out by the Government Chemist, and on page 58 of the Report No. 24, to which reference has already been made, analyses are given of two French musts containing 360 and 302 parts of sulphur dioxide per million respectively and of an American concentrated must containing 63 parts of sulphur dioxide per million. If we now look at paragraph 153 of the Final Report of the Departmental Committee we find that the matter of preservatives in certain non‐alcoholic beverages is dealt with in the following words: “We consider that sweetened and unsweetened fruit juices, syrups, cordials, non‐alcoholic wines and articles of similar composition such as certain well‐known proprietary cordials, are peculiarly liable to develop moulds and to ferment, owing to liability to exposure on the consumer's premises between the first opening and final consumption, and we think that on this account they may under present trade conditions need the addition of a small proportion of preservative. We therefore suggest that the presence either of benzoic acid up to 5 grains or of sulphur dioxide up to 3 grains per pint might be considered.” These recommendations were adopted in the Draft Rule and Order, issued in February, 1925, and there was no reference in this Draft indicating that grape juice was to be treated in any manner distinct from other fruit juices. The introduction of Item 4 in S.R. & O. 1925, 775, came as a complete surprise to everyone and the general surprise felt was mentioned by Mr. C. A. Mitchell (now Dr. Mitchell) in a paper read before the Medico‐Legal Society on Tuesday, April 20th, 1926, with the Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Aitken in the chair. Mr. Mitchell made the following statement: “The fourth item in the Schedule is one at which one can only stare and wonder how it ever came there. According to this regulation unfermented grape juice and non‐alcoholic wine made from it, may contain the enormous quantity of 17 grains of benzoic acid per pint, provided that it is labelled in accordance with Schedule II. I am fairly familiar with the cases which have been brought into Court during the last 20 years, but I cannot recall an instance of a non‐alcoholic wine (labelled or unlabelled) containing an amount of preservative equivalent to this quantity of benzoic acid.” Mr. Mitchell then proceeds to explain that the most probable reason for the introduction of this item into the rule is that it is intended to apply to non‐alcoholic sacramental wine, which is not to be used as a beverage, but which is taken a little at a time and is expected to keep for long periods, when the bottle has once been opened. This is, in fact, the position so far as I am aware and there was never any intention of any restriction on the use of sulphur dioxide in the ordinary way as a preservative in unfermented grape juice so long as the amount present did not exceed 350 parts per million.

WE publish this issue on the eve of the Brighton Conference and our hope is that this number of The Library World will assist the objects of that meeting. Everything connected with the Conference appears to have been well thought out. It is an excellent thing that an attempt has been made to get readers of papers to write them early in order that they might be printed beforehand. Their authors will speak to the subject of these papers and not read them. Only a highly‐trained speaker can “get over” a written paper—witness some of the fiascos we hear from the microphone, for which all papers that are broadcast have to be written. But an indifferent reader, when he is really master of his subject, can make likeable and intelligible remarks extemporarily about it. As we write somewhat before the Conference papers are out we do not know if the plan to preprint the papers has succeeded. We are sure that it ought to have done so. It is the only way in which adequate time for discussion can be secured.

This is the first comprehensive study that has appeared on consumption and rationing in the present war. All types of rationing and the experience of a very large number of countries are brought under review, on the basis of material collected by the Economic Intelligence Service of the League of Nations. Rationing and other measures of consumption control are enforced in order to ensure an equitable distribution of limited—and in many countries drastically curtailed—supplies of certain essential goods, such as foodstuffs, clothing and fuel. But they play a further very vital role in war economy, by reducing (or limiting) civilian demand in order to liberate maximum resources for war purposes and by making possible the control of prices. The volume opens with a discussion of this broad problem of consumption control in war economy, the various methods of rationing, the conditions under which they can operate successfully and the connection between rationing and price control. Particular attention is naturally devoted to food. In the second chapter tables are given showing, for some thirty countries, by categories of consumers and groups of foodstuffs, rations prevailing in the spring of 1942. As regards Europe, available evidence seems to show that diets are adequate in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland, and not critically short in calories (though apparently deficient in animal proteins, fats, minerals and certain vitamins) in Germany, despite the substantial cut in the German rations which occurred in April, 1942. The situation in Italy and Spain is decidedly worse than in Germany. This is also true of the occupied countries, except Denmark. Not only are the legal rations lower, but those rations are frequently unobtainable in the shops; and even if obtainable, it is often doubtful whether full rations can be purchased by the poorest classes, prices having risen out of all proportion to the frozen wage‐rates. Diets in the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia and Norway are nutritionally poorer and more deficient in calories than in Germany. In France and Belgium, where the rations represent about 60 per cent. of the pre‐war calorie consumption, many of those who are unable to eke out their rations by purchases on the “ black market ” are living at the barest level of subsistence. In Finland the rations represent about 55 per cent., in Poland (General‐Government) less than 50 per cent. of the pre‐war calorie consumption. In the latter country, in parts of Yugoslavia, and above all in Greece, there is famine. To meet differences in individual needs, two distinct systems have been evolved. In Germany, where about 90 per cent. of food consumption is rationed, rations are differentiated according to kinds of foods and classes of consumers—the latter being divided into categories by occupations (heavy worker, very heavy worker, light worker) and by sex, age, etc. The rations of bread, fat and meat of “ very heavy workers,” for example, are between two and three times as large as those of normal consumers. The German system, which has been generally applied in the occupied countries, is rigid and leaves a minimum of free consumers' choice. The British system is far more flexible. Bread and potatoes are free, thus permitting everyone to obtain an unlimited number of calories, while restaurant and canteen meals are supplementary to the individual's basic ration. Special needs are met by the allocation of extra rations to canteens catering to industrial workers, by the extension of free school meals, and by “ distribution schemes ” giving children, mothers and sick people first claim on available supplies of protective foods such as milk and fruit‐juice. Flexibility is also maintained by the group rationing of canned goods. According to this system each item within the group is valued in points and the consumer may buy whatever he desires up to a given total point value. It is considered of great importance that all, irrespective of income, should be able to obtain their quota of essential foods. Among the measures introduced for this purpose are the far‐reaching subsidies to keep down prices. Many aspects of the British system are naturally to be found elsewhere: for example, the subsidisation of staple foods is practised in Sweden and certain other European countries; Germany distributes free vitamin preparations to school children; canteen and school feeding is common in Germany and many of the occupied areas, though for these meals ration cards have, as a rule, to be given up. In the case of food, there are definite limits to the amount by which consumption can be reduced without endangering health and life; in the case of most, though not all, consumers' goods, there are no such obvious limits and, in fact, the consumption of such goods has been drastically curtailed. Available information on the subject is given in the third chapter. The group rationing system just mentioned has been universally applied in the case of clothing. But in Germany, most of the occupied areas and Italy, rationing lias been supplemented by a system of special permits, without which no purchase of certain articles of clothing can be made. By the first half of 1941, purchases of clothing in Germany had been reduced by some 50 per cent. from the pre‐war level. The clothes rationing introduced in the United Kingdom in June, 1941, led to a decrease of about 30 per cent. in the volume of sales in the second half of that year compared with the same period of 1940. Fuel, electric current, soap, and other articles of household consumption are subject to restrictions of varying degrees of severity; the production of luxury goods has been restricted or stopped, while such limited quantities as may reach the market are subject to drastically increased taxation; the production of most durable consumers' goods— refrigerators, household furniture, pianos, etc.—has likewise been stopped. The last chapter contains a brief analysis of the effects which war‐time restrictions have had on the aggregate volume of consumption in various countries. Consumption has been heavily reduced in all European countries and in Japan; in the United States, Canada, Australia and certain other countries it appears to have increased up to the latter part of 1941. In the United Kingdom the reduction in consumption provided about one‐third of the total domestic resources absorbed in the war effort in 1941. The requirements of war production have also been met to a considerable extent by the consumption of capital. Germany, in particular, has had to resort to capital consumption on a large scale, in spite of a curtailment of private consumption by some 25 to 30 per cent. In reviewing the whole body of evidence, especially concerning food rationing, it is observed that the rationing systems which have been developed are “ more than a mere method of restricting individual consumption. They aim in fact at securing a minimum diet for the population as a whole and, in spite of the necessary limitations imposed by the war‐time scarcity, they contain the elements of a distributive system in which consumption is guided not so much by individual purchasing power as by human wants.”

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.

Perhaps it should be said that optimal nutrition is an ultimate goal which science is not yet prepared to define descriptively in detail. Speaking operationally, we may say that recent research has established, fully and objectively, the principle of the nutritional improvability of the normal. The experimental evidence can, of course, be but sketchily presented in a review of this sort which attempts to summarise in so little space a scientific advance of undoubtedly far‐reaching significance. Under the necessity of extreme brevity, the writer trusts he will be pardoned for drawing illustrations chiefly from the work with which he is best acquainted. In experiments to determine what proportion of protective food suffices to balance a minimum proportion of wheat in the diet, it was found that a mixture of five‐sixths ground whole wheat and one‐sixth dried whole milk with table salt and distilled water (Diet A) was adequate in that it supported normal growth and health with successful reproduction and rearing of young, generation after generation. Yet when the proportion of milk was increased (Diet B) the average results were better. In the experiments just mentioned, an already‐adequate dietary and an already‐normal condition of nutritional wellbeing and health were improved by a more scientific adjustment of the relative quantities in which the staple articles of food were consumed. And in the comparison of the effects of these two diets the principle of the nutritional improvability of the normal was manifested measurably at every stage of the life cycle. Growth and development, adult vitality, and length of life all were normal on Diet A and all were better on Diet B. This research having been planned in terms of natural articles of food, the sole experimental variable was the quantitative proportion or ratio between the foods constituting the dietary. If, on the other hand, we turn to the consideration of individual chemical factors, we find that the single change in proportions of staple foods had the effect of enriching the dietary at four points: protein, calcium, riboflavin, and vitamin A. Subsequent experimentation was planned both in terms of these four chemical factors separately and in terms of diversification of the dietary by addition of natural foods of other types. Here it was found that enrichment of the original diet with protein alone or its diversification with other natural foods tended to a moderate increase in growth and adult size, but no distinct improvement in the life history. Clearly this indicates that the increased intake of protein played but little if any part in the nutritional improvement induced by Diet B over Diet A; and also strengthens the probability that the observed improvement is essentially explainable in terms of the factors we recognise, for if anything unknown had played an important rôle in this improvement, the diversification of the diet would probably have revealed some indication of it. Calcium, riboflavin, and vitamin A each is found to play a signicant part in the nutritional improvement of the already adequate diet and already normal health. With each of these three factors the level of intake giving best results in long‐term experiments is two or more times higher than the level of minimal adequacy. Some aspects of the respective rôles of these three factors are still subjects of further experimental investigation. It is not to be assumed that the wide margins of beneficial intake over actual need, found as just mentioned with calcium, riboflavin, and vitamin A, will apply to the other nutritionally essential mineral elements and vitamins. Each should be investigated independently in this respect; and with no presuppositions derived from the findings with calcium, riboflavin, and vitamin A, for these were not random samples, but were taken for rigorous experimental study because of the definite suggestions of earlier work. Meanwhile the above‐mentioned findings with the factors already comprehensively investigated afford a basis both for clarification of a fundamental chemical principle in nutrition, and for its practical application. One useful first‐approximation of nineteenth‐century science was that an organism may be expected to grow only as fast or as far as is consistent with the specific chemical composition of its kind; and another was that it is the fixité of the organism's internal environment which enables it to cope with new or changing external environments. It is surprising that these views continued to be held so rigidly for so long when at the same time there were developing physico‐chemical principles which call for a more flexible concept. In this light it seems clear that the so‐called steady states of the body are only relatively so: that one cannot introduce into the system different amounts and proportions of such active factors as we know some food constituents to be, without some resulting changes of concentration levels or of dynamic‐equilibrium points, or both. And now we have the objective evidence of well‐controlled, long‐term experimentation showing nutritional improvement of an already normal bodily condition in such manner as seems best expressed by saying that the chemical aspect of the body's internal environment has been modified for the better. Thus in accordance with physico‐chemical principles we now conceive the “normal level” of each nutritional factor to be not a single fixed level but a zone. Undoubtedly this zone is wider for some factors than for others, and probably also the most advantageous level is with some substances near the upper margins, and with other substances near the middle or the lower margins, of the respective normal zones. Thus while our bodies enjoy by virtue of their biological inheritance certain self‐regulatory processes of striking effectiveness, our minds are now finding, through chemical research, how these can be made still more effective by the scientific guidance of our nutritional intakes; by helpfully influencing our internal environments through good habits in our daily choice of food. Contemporary research in the chemistry of nutrition is here developing a fundamental and far‐reaching scientific concept which hitherto has hardly been apprehended because species have been regarded as more rigidly specific in their chemical composition, and the “steady states” of their internal environment have been regarded as more rigidly fixed, than they really are. The accepted generalisation that each life history is determined (1) by heredity and (2) by environment assigns all except hereditary factors to environment by definition. But as the result of nearly a century of scientific as well as popular habit of thought, the word “environment” actually connotes surroundings. Science exaggerated the extent and rigidity with which our internal chemistry is automatically regulated by our biological inheritance, to such an extent that there seemed nothing for us to do about it except to admire its wonders and stand ready to repair its occasional breakdowns. But now that we are finding ways to add conscious chemical control and improvement to the marvellous mechanism with which nature endows us, we can be not merely repair‐men to a biologically inherited bodily machine, but also architects of a higher health. It may help to make this newly‐opened opportunity clearer if, instead of the above‐mentioned two, we think and speak of three major determinants of our life‐histories: (1) heredity; (2) environment, in the familiar external sense of surroundings; and (3) the body's internal environment, which immediately environs and conditions the life process, and which in the course of the life cycle is much more significantly influenced than hitherto supposed by even the normal differences in what we take into our bodies as food. This responsiveness of our internal chemistry, and resulting degree or level of positive health, to our nutritional intake, usually becomes manifestly measurable only in cases of visible injury from nutritional deficiency, which, once apprehended, we seek to avoid; or in experimentation with laboratory animals whose natural life‐cycles are such as to permit of accurately controlled conditions and observations extending throughout entire lifetimes and successive generations. In the long‐controlled, laboratory‐bred colony of experimental animals used in large numbers for full‐life and successive‐generation feeding tests conducted with all the quantitatively meticulous care and precautions to which research workers in the exact sciences are trained, we now have an instrument and technique of investigation such as has not existed before. Much remains to be done in the new field of research thus opened; but work already completed shows clearly the possibility of nutritional improvements of already‐normal health, vitality and efficiency throughout our lives. Whatever we are individually born with, we can each do more for ourselves to influence our life histories in the direction of our aspirations than science has hitherto thought.

The value which can be placed upon the rights of property in a name of a commodity, a food or drink, perhaps famous all over the world, which has come down to us through the centuries, is incalculable. Most of such foods and drinks have a regional association, and are prepared according to methods, often secret, handed down from one generation to another and from locally grown and produced materials. Nowhere are such traditions so well established as in cheese‐making and the wine industry. The names do not signify merely a method of manufacture, since this can be simulated almost anywhere, nor even the raw materials, but differences in climate, the soil and its treatment, its produce, harvesting, even in the contaminants of environment. Rochfort cheese, for example, is made from ewe's milk, but most important, with mould growths found only in the caves of that part of France where it is stored.

THE following list of contracts placed by the Air Ministry during November is extracted from the December issue of The Ministry of Labour Gazette:—

Outlines research work [by the Machine Vision Group at Royal Holloway] into an x‐ray inspection system able to detect contaminants in packaged food products. Describes the analysis of a four‐stage machine vision structure that includes image formation, pre‐processing, feature extraction and decision. The system was tested on various food products and contaminants with the resultant conclusions that the contamination detection system was adaptive and worked with many types of products and contaminants. Refinements in the final decision making stage are being implemented by the use of expert [neural] networks.

WE offer our readers again our best wishes for the joy that appropriately belongs to Christmas. The happy festival comes at the close of one of the most fruitful and useful years in library history: a year which has seen wide developments—not, indeed, in the establishment of new libraries, though these have not been wanting (the last month of the year, for example, has seen Lord Elgin open the new library at Hendon), but in a drawing together of existing organizations, the creation of a really new Library Association, and a degree of co‐operation which thirty years ago would have seemed difficult.