[G] The crusting of wine in the natural way generally takes place in about nine months; but, among the artizans of the factitious wine-trade, it is accomplished in a much shorter time. Those ingenious gentry line the inside of the bottles they intend to fill with their compound called wine, by suffering a saturated hot solution of super-tartrate of potash, coloured red with a decoction of Brazil wood, to crystallize within them. Others of that honest fraternity, who dislike trouble, put a tea-spoon full of the powder of catechu into each bottle, and by this artifice soon produce a fine crusted appearance of “aged wine.” This simulation of maturity is often accomplished by the humbler dealer by covering the bottles with snow, or by exposing them to the rays of the sun, or by keeping them for a few days in hot water. Where the casks are to be bottled off by the purchaser, or in his presence, they are stained in the inside with the artificial crystalline crust of super-tartrate of potash, as a proof of the age of the wine. [H] To produce the dilapidations of “Father Time” on wine corks, the dry rot, however injurious to others, is of great advantage to wine-dealers, as it soon covers the bottles with its mouldy appearance, and consumes the external part of the cork; so that with a trifling operation on the bottles after they are filled, and then deposited in cellars pretty strongly affected with the dry rot, they can furnish the admirers of “aged wine” with liquor having the appearance of having been bottled seven or eight years, though it has not in reality been there so many months. The staining of the lower extremities of the corks with a fine red colour, produced from a strong decoction of Brazil wood and alum, to make them appear “aged,” or as if they had been long in contact with the wine, is another of the devices of the factitious wine-trade, and forms a distinct branch of its operations. SECTION III. _Beer and Ale._