a woman guilty of Adultery.

An adulteress, by our law, undergoes no temporal punishment whatever, except the loss of her dower; and she does not lose even that, if her husband is weak enough to be reconciled to her, and cohabit with her after the offence committed. 13 Ed. I. cap. 34.

But it is to be observed, that adulteresses are such either by the canon or civil law. According to the former, a woman is an adulteress who, either being herself married, converses carnally with another man; or being single herself, converses with a man that is married. According to the latter, she is not an adulteress, if she be not herself in the married state, though she converses with a man that is. The crime, in this case, was more properly called *fuprum* than *adulterium*. Hence, among the Romans the word *adultera*, "adulteress," differed from *pellex*, which denoted a single woman who cohabited with a married man; and *pellex* differed from *concubina*, which signified her who had only intercourse with an unmarried man. The former was reputed infamous, and the latter innocent.

ADULTERATION, the act of debasing, by an improper mixture, something that was pure and genuine.

The word is Latin, formed of the verb *adulterare*, "to corrupt," by mingling something foreign to any substance. We have laws against the adulteration of coffee, tea, tobacco, snuff, wine, beer, bread, wax, hairpowder, &c.

ADULTERATION of coin, properly imports the making or casting of a wrong metal, or with too base or too much alloy.

Adulterations of coins are effected divers ways: as, by forging another stamp or inscription; by mixing impure metals with the gold or silver; most properly, by making use of a wrong metal, or an undue alloy, or too great an admixture of the baser metals with gold or silver. Counterfeiting the stamp, or clipping and lessening the weight, do not so properly come under the denomination of adulterating.—Evelyn gives rules and methods, both of adulterating and detecting adulterated metals, &c.—Adulterating is somewhat less extensive than *debasing*, which includes diminishing, clipping, &c.

To adulterate or debauch the current coin, is a capital crime in all nations.—The ancients punished it with great severity: among the Egyptians both hands were cut off; and by the civil law, the offender was thrown to wild beasts. The emperor Tacitus enacted, That counterfeiting the coin should be capital; and under Constantine it was made treason, as it is also among us. The adulterating of gems is a curious art, and the methods of detecting it no less useful. Nichols Lapid. p. 18.