purest state, are too often injurious to the constitution without the admixture of poisons.[4] The varieties of wine are so numerous as almost to defy calculation. Mr. Brande, in his table,[5] gives a list of no less than forty-four different kinds; and there are others which he has not enumerated. Ardent spirits are fewer in number, and may be mostly comprised under the heads of rum, gin, brandy, and whisky. The first is the prevailing drink over the West Indies, North America, and such cities of Great Britain as are intimately connected with these regions by commerce. The second is extensively used in Holland and Switzerland, the countries which principally furnish it, and has found its way pretty generally over the whole of Europe. The third is chiefly produced in Charente and Languedoc, and is the spirit most commonly found in the south. The fourth is confined in a great measure to Ireland and Scotland, in which latter country the best has always been made. Of malt liquors we have many varieties. Britain, especially England, is the country which furnishes them in greatest perfection. They are the natural drinks of Englishmen—the _vinum Anglicorum_, as foreigners have often remarked. Every town of any consequence in the empire has its Brewery; and in almost every one is there some difference in the quality of the liquor. Brown stout, London and Scotch porters, Burton, Dorchester, Edinburgh, and Alloa ales, are only a few of the endless varieties of these widely-circulated fluids. Besides wines, ardent spirits, and malt liquors, there are many other agents possessing inebriating properties. Among others, the _Peganum Harmala_ or Syrian rue, so often used by the sultan Solyman; the _Hibiscus Saldarissa_, which furnishes the Indian bangue, and from which the _Nepenthes_ of the ancients is supposed to have been made; the _Balsac_, or Turkish bangue, found on the shores of the Levant; the _Penang_, or Indian betel; the _Hyoscyamus Niger_; and the _Atropa Belladonna_. In addition to these, and many more, there are opium, tobacco, _Cocculus Indicus_, and the innumerable tribes of liqueurs and ethers, together with other agents of a less potent nature, such as clary, darnel, and saffron. The variety of agents capable of exciting drunkenness is indeed surprising, and in proportion to their number seems the prevalence of that fatal vice to which an improper use of them gives rise. CHAPTER II. CAUSES OF DRUNKENNESS.