The use of Sikes's hydrometer necessitates the employment of a considerable quantity of spirit. For the testing of spirits in bulk no more convenient instrument has been devised, but where very small quantities are available more suitable laboratory methods must be adopted. In England, the Finance Act 1907 (7 Ed. VII. c. 13), section 4, provides as follows: (1) The Commissioners of Customs and the Commissioners of Inland Revenue may jointly make regulations authorizing the use of any means described in the regulations for ascertaining for any purpose the strength or weight of spirits. (2) Where under any enactment Sykes's (sic) Hydrometer is directed to be used or may be used for the purpose of ascertaining the strength or weight of spirits, any means so authorized by regulations may be used instead of Sykes's Hydrometer and references to Sykes's Hydrometer in any enactment shall be construed accordingly. (3) Any regulations made under this section shall be published in the London, Edinburgh and Dublin Gazette, and shall take effect from the date of publication, or such later date as may be mentioned in the regulations for the purpose. (4) The expression "spirits" in this section has the same meaning as in the Spirits Act 1880. (W. G.) FOOTNOTES: [1] In _Nicholson's Journal_, iii. 89, Citizen Eusebe Salverte calls attention to the poem "De Ponderibus et Mensuris" generally ascribed to Rhemnius Fannius Palaemon, and consequently 300 years older than Hypatia, in which the hydrometer is described and attributed to Archimedes. [2] _Nicholson's Journal_, vol. i. p. 111, footnote. HYDROPATHY, the name given, from the Greek, to the "water-cure," or the treatment of disease by water, used outwardly and inwardly. Like many descriptive names, the word "hydropathy" is defective and even misleading, the active agents in the treatment being heat and cold, of which water is little more than the vehicle, and not the only one. Thermotherapeutics (or thermotherapy) is a term less open to objection.