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Saturated polyesters or so‐called oil‐free alkyd resins have gained increasing importance in recent years for the manufacture of solvent‐contain‐ing stoving paints. Coatings of high industrial use value can be produced from these on metallic objects by crosslinking with melamine/formaldehyde resins. The coatings are hard, scratch‐proof, elastic, stain‐resistant,firmly adherent and resistant to weathering — a combination of properties possessed by only a few other binders. These saturated polyesters are linear or branched condensation products of dibasic or polybasic carboxylic acids and polyalcohols, they carry mainly terminal hydroxyl groups and possess mean molecular weights between about 1,500 and 4,000 (1) (2) (3).

At a meeting of the Council of the Royal Borough of Kensington, on November 22, Councillor J. BROOKE‐LITTLE, Chairman of the Public Health Committee, brought up a report as follows:—

In reference to the administration of the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts by the various local authorities in England and Wales during the year 1908 the following remarks appear in the recently issued report of the Local Government Board for that year. “Our attention has been drawn to the practice which has been adopted recently by certain local authorities of inviting applicants for the office of public analyst to state the terms upon which they are prepared to accept the appointment. We consider the offering of such appointment ‘on tender’ as open to strong objection, and we trust that the practice will be discontinued.”

DEAR SIR, We were pleased to notice the reference to Air Refuelling in the article entitled ‘Assisted Take‐off in Relation to Transport Aeroplanes’, by L. L. Th. Huls, v.i. in your December, 1946 issue, and would like to amplify his comments in certain respects.

So far as the various British Food and Drugs Acts are concerned, the meaning of “sophistication” or “adulteration,” which includes “substitution,” is now very wide.

At the seventeenth ordinary meeting of the Royal Society of Arts, on Wednesday, April 17, 1912, DR. RUDOLF MESSEL, President of the Society of Chemical Industry, in the chair, a paper on “Municipal Chemistry” was read by MR. J. H. COSTE, F.I.C. The following résumé of the points of interest to readers of the BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL is published by kind permission of the author and of the Royal Society of Arts:—

We have before us the recently‐issued Annual Report of the Local Government Board on the work done by the Local Authorities under the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts. While preserving the general form and arrangement of its predecessors, it shows that not only the Board itself, but the local authorities also, are coming to an increasing realisation of the importance of the subject. Six years ago we had occasion to point out some of the defects attaching to these reports, and to suggest various improvements that might be made in them. We felt, and expressed at the time our belief, that the Board was much handicapped by the form of quarterly reports imposed on the Public Analyst by the Food and Drugs Acts, and by the non‐existence of any machinery by which it could get together and collate the vast amount of information which those reports ought to, but do not, yield. Until the law is altered the present system must continue, but it is striking evidence of the lack of serious study spent on the matter that for want of effective coordination and control more than one‐half of what may be considered the real and permanent value of the Public Analyst's work goes into the waste‐paper basket. The work done by most Public Analysts as individuals is limited to some few hundreds of samples of any one article of food, but the combined expeperience of them all would in most cases — assuming it could be accurately ascertained—go far towards settling in a single year many of the thorny questions relative to standards and limits which are fought out at such great length and still greater cost to the community in the courts of law.

With reference to the report of the Annual General Meeting of the Pure Food and Health Society of Great Britain, which was published in the February issue of THE BRITISH FOOD JOURNAL, and to the speech delivered by MR. GOSLIN upon the proper handling and purveying of meat, an article which has subsequently appeared in The Standard is of considerable interest. It is pointed out that no one who gives the matter serious consideration can approve of the present methods. “Many years ago Oxford made its protest against carcasses or joints being exposed in open‐fronted shops. It is just possible that when the powers that were objected to and forbade this proceeding they thought more of the æsthetics than the science of it, but they most certainly did a good thing when they took flesh foods away from the contamination of street dust and the variations of temperature that are dependent on every gust of wind or every moment of sunlight or shadow.”

IN connexion with the development of the modern transport aeroplane it is of growing importance to pay proper attention to the take‐off characteristics of these aeroplanes and to consider the means suitable to improve them. For the realization of economically justified air transport two trends have been indicated; both having an unfavourable effect on take‐off performance. These trends are:

This Society, originally known as “The National Pure Food Association,” has been reconstituted under the above title. The objects of the Society are to assist as far as possible in checking the widespread evils of food adulteration, for this purpose to bring about a public realisation of the admittedly serious character of food frauds, and, under expert advice, to co‐operate with constituted authority in effecting their repression. The policy of the Society is directed by a representative Council, and, the Society being thus established on an authoritative basis, cannot fail to become a powerful and valuable organisation if adequately and generously supported by the public. The governing body of the Society is constituted as follows:—