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Southland Times, Issue 1521, 9 January 1872, Page 2

Dubing the last session of Assembly, an Act was passed for further regulating the sale and disposal of poisons and poisonous compounds, which took effect on the Ist insfc. The essential portions of the Act are first the articles deemed to be poisons within the meaning of the enactment. These are enumerated as follows : — Arsenic and its preparations, prussic acid, cyanides of potassium and all metallic cyanides, strychnine and all poisonous vegetable alkaloids and their salts, aconite and its preparations, emetic tartar, corrosive sublimate, cantharides, savin and its oil, ergot of rye and its preparations, laudanum, opium, oxalic acid, chloroform, belladonna and its preparations, essential oil of almonds (unless deprived of its prussic acid), all preparations of opium or of poppies, preparations of corrosive sublimate, preparations of morphine, red oxide of mercury (commonly known as red precipitate of mercury), ammoniated mercury (commonly known as white precipitate of mercury), every compound containing any of tlie poisons mentioned in this schedule when prepared or sold for the destruction of vermin, the tincture and all vesicating liquid preparations of cantharides. In furfcher explanation of this provision, clause 3 provides that an order shall be advertised in the New Zealand Gazette, and on the expiry of three months from such advertisement, the article named in such resolution shall be deemed to be poison within the meaning of the Act. Clause 5 enacts the appointment of Registrars for each province, or other division of the colony, with an ofiice at such town or place as the G-overnor may direct. Any person wishing to sell or keep open shop for retailing or compounding poisons, may be registered without fee or reward on application to the Registrar personally, or by registered letter. In the month of January of each year the Registrar for each province is instructed to print and publish and authorise to be sold a correct register of all persons registered, such register to be used as complete evidence ofthe person being so registered. The sale of poisons by unregistered persons is prohibited under a penalty not exceeding £5. It is also enacted that poison when sold must be labelled wifch a wrapper or cover with the name ofthe article, and the word poison, together with the name and address of the seller, written thereon. It is further ] enacted that it shall be unlawful to sell poison to any person unknown to the seller, unless introduced by some person known to the seller. Ifc is also provided that all sales are to be entered in a book to be kept for that purpose, in which the date of the sale, the name and address of the purchaser, and other particulars shall appear ; the penalty provided for disobedience being £5 for the first offence, and£Lofor the second and subsequent offences. This book is to be open to the inspection of police officers under a penalty of not less than 20s, and not exceeding £5. Wholesale dealers and legally qualified medical practitioners dispensing medicine to patients are exempt from the operations of the A ct. Clause 14 of the Act further provides : — No person shall sell any arsenic uuless the Bame be before the sale thereof mixed with soot or indigo, in the proportion of one ounce of soofc or half an ounce of indigo at tbe least to one pound of arsenic, and so in proportion for any greater or less quantity, on pain of forfeiture of a penalty not exceeding £5, to be recovered ia a summary way. Provided always that where such arsenic is stated by the purchaser to be required for some purpose for which such admixture would, according to the representation of the purchaser render it unfit, such arsenic may be sold without such a dmixture.