109. Another thing is, can a man who has brewed beer at his own house in the country, bring that beer into town to his own house, and for the use of his family there? This has been asked of me. I cannot give a positive answer without reading about _seven large volumes in quarto of taxing laws_. The best way would be to _try it_; and, if any penalty, pay it by _subscription_, if that would not come under the law of _conspiracy_! However, I _think_, there can be no danger here. So monstrous a thing as this can, surely, not exist. If there be such a law, it is daily violated; for nothing is more common than for country gentlemen, who have a dislike to die by poison, bringing their home-brewed beer to London. 110. Another correspondent recommends _parishes to make their own malt_. But, surely, the landlords mean to get rid of the _malt and salt tax_! Many dairies, I dare say, pay 50_l._ a year each in salt tax. How, then, are they to contend against Irish butter and Dutch butter and cheese? And as to the malt tax, it is a dreadful drain from the land. I have heard of labourers, living "in _unkent places_," making their _own malt_, even now! Nothing is so easy as to make your own malt, if you were permitted. You soak the barley about three days (according to the state of the weather.) and then you put it upon stones or bricks _and keep it turned_, till the root _shoots out_; and then to know when to _stop_, and to put it to dry, take up a corn (which you will find nearly transparent) and look through the skin of it. You will see the _spear_, that is to say, the shoot that would come out of the ground, pushing on towards the _point_ of the barley-corn. It starts from the bottom, where the root comes out; and it goes on towards the other end; and would, if _kept moist_, come out at that other end when the root was about an inch long. So that, when you have got the _root to start_, by soaking and turning in heap, the spear is _on its way_. If you look in through the skin, you will see it; and now observe; when the _point of the spear_ has got along as far as the _middle of the barley-corn_, you should take your barley and _dry it_. How easy would every family, and especially every farmer, do this, if it were not for the punishment attached to it! The persons in the "unkent places" before mentioned, dry the malt in their _oven_! But let us hope that the labourer will soon be able to get malt without exposing himself to punishment as a _violater of the law_. KEEPING COWS.