the duke requested the neighbouring states, particularly Bavaria and Eychstat, to keep a more watchful eye over their wine-merchants and waggoners, by which means it was supposed all danger would be avoided. In the following year, the city of Ulm discovered a poor man at Giengen, within its own jurisdiction, who had sweetened with litharge some sour wine purchased at Wurtemberg. He was accordingly banished from the country; and several other persons in the duchy were condemned to labour at the fortifications. This example was attended with so good an effect, that for some time adulteration was not heard of; but eight years after, John Jacob Ehrni of Eslingen introduced that practice again with some variation, and not only employed it himself, but induced others to follow it in several other places. Greater severity was at length exercised. Ehrni was beheaded; the possessors of adulterated wine were fined, and the wine was thrown away. After this second example, which was followed in other parts of the country, the art of adulterating wine seems to have been more carefully concealed, or to have been entirely abandoned. But in the present century treatises have been published on the management of wine, in which the art of improving it by litharge has been taught, as a method perfectly free from danger[745]. For detecting metal in wine, the arsenical liver of sulphur is commonly employed; a solution of which is called _liquor probatorius Wurtembergicus_[746]. This appellation, in my opinion, has been given to it because it was first applied for that purpose by a public order in the duchy of Wurtemberg; though the invention is ascribed to one of the duke’s physicians[747]. The use of it however is not attended with certainty, because it precipitates several metals black without distinction, and lead is not the only one that we have reason to suspect in wine. The operation of fumigating wine with sulphur is performed by kindling rags of linen dipped in melted brimstone, and suffering the vapour to enter a cask filled, or partly filled, with that liquor. I do not know at what period this process was invented; but it is worthy of remark, that we are told by Pliny[748], that in his time some employed sulphur in the preparation of wine. On this subject he quotes Cato; but the passage to which he alludes is not to be found in the works of that author handed down to us; and the method in which it was really used is consequently unknown. Reason and experience show that the vapour of sulphur stops the fermentation so hurtful to wine, and prevents it from spoiling; and many writers on the management of wine allow the free use of it for that purpose[749]. It can certainly do no injury to the health; and it was not necessary for the police in different countries to distribute prescriptions for employing it, to forbid it, or to limit the quantity[750].