his poison inflames, corrodes, burns, extenuates, and dries up; nor does it allay, but increase thirst; for such is the nature of sulphur, which, mixed with other noxious and poisonous things, the names of which I should be ashamed to mention, is added to wine, before it has done fermenting, in order to change its nature. This poison we have been obliged to purchase for our friends, wives, children and selves, at a high price; as wine has been scarce for several years past; and it would seem that Nature had denied this liquor so long out of revenge against her enemies and the destroyers of the whole human race. You ought, therefore, most prudent fathers, not only to empty their vessels, by throwing this poison into your river; but to cast alive into the flames the sellers of this wine, and thus to punish poisoning as well as robbery.”--Pirkheimeri Opera, Franck. 1610, fol. p. 136. [This writer was the friend and contemporary of Albert Durer.] [743] De docimasia vini lithargyrio mangonisati. Tubingæ 1707. [744] De la Mare, Traité de la Police, i. 615. [745] William Graham’s Art of making Wines from Fruit, Flowers and Herbs. Sixth edit. London, 8vo. [746] [A solution of sulphuretted hydrogen answers much better.] [747] Anleitung zur Verbesserung der Weine in Teutschland, p. 32. [748] Lib. xiv. cap. 20. [749] [It acts by keeping the wine from contact with oxygen, which is essential to the acetic fermentation.] [750] This was done at Rothenburg on the Tauber in 1497. It was ordered that half an ounce of pure sulphur should be employed for a cask containing a tun of wine; and that when wine had been once exposed to the vapour of sulphur, it should not undergo the same operation a second time. [751] In John Hornung’s Cista Medica, Norimbergæ 1625, there are two letters from German physicians (Libavius and Doldius) respecting this practice. [752] Geopon. p. 486, 502.--Lemnius de Miraculis Occultis Naturæ, Coloniæ, 1581, 8vo, p. 291. [753] See Haushaltungs-Recht, Leipsic, 1716, 4to, p. 1393. [754] Von Lersner, Chronica der Stadt Frankfurt, ii. p. 683. Wine seasoned with mustard, and which was sold as boiled wine, was forbidden at the same time. See p. 684. In the year 1484 wine mixed with the herb mugwort was prohibited also. [755] Anleitung, _ut supra_, p. 93, 128. [756] See Redding’s History and Description of Modern Wines. ARTIFICIAL PEARLS.