To make Metheglyn:-(from Mistress Hatchman. This receipt makes good Metheglyn; I thinke as good as the Devises). Allow to every quart of honey a gallon of water; and when the honey is dissolved, trie if it will beare an egg to the breadth of three pence above the liquor; or if you will have it stronger putt in more honey. Then set it on the fire, and when the froth comes on the toppe of it, skimme it cleane; then crack eight or ten hen-egges and putt in the liquor to cleare it: two or three handfulls of sweet bryar, and so much of muscovie, and sweet marjoram the like quantity; some doe put sweet cis, or if you please put in a little of orris root. Boyle all these untill the egges begin to look black, (these egges may be enough for a hoggeshead,) then straine it forth through a fine sieve into a vessell to coole; the next day tunne it up in a barrell, and when it hath workt itself cleare, which will be in about a weeke’s time, stop it up very close, and if you make it strong enough, sc. to carry the breadth of a sixpence, it will keep a yeare. This receipt is something neer that of Mr. Thorn. Piers of the Devises, the great Metheglyn-maker. Metheglyn is a pretty considerable manufacture in this towne time out of mind. I doe believe that a quantity of mountain thyme would be a very proper ingredient; for it is most wholesome and fragrant [Aubrey also gives another “receipt to make white metheglyn,” which he obtained “from old Sir Edward Baynton, 1640.” I have seen this old English beverage made by my grandmother, as here described.—J. B.] Mr. Francis Potter, Rector of Kilmanton, did sett a hive of bees in one of the lances of a paire of scales in a little closet, and found that in summer dayes they gathered about halfe a pound a day; and one day, which he conceived was a honey-dew, they gathered three pounds wanting a quarter. The hive would be something lighter in the morning than at night. Also he tooke five live bees and putt them in a paper, which he did cutt like a grate, and weighed them, and in an hower or two they would wast the weight of three or four wheatcornes. He bids me observe their thighes in a microscope. (Upon the Brenta river, by Padua in Italy, they have hives of bees in open boates; the bees goe out to feed and gather till the honey-dews are spent neer the boate; and then the bee master rows the boate to a fresh place, and by the sinking of the boate knows when to take the honey, &c.—J. EVELYN.) CHAPTER XIV. OF MEN AND WOEMEN. [THE following instances of remarkable longevity, monstrous births, &c. will suffice to shew the nature of this Chapter. It must be admitted that its contents are unimportant except as matters of curious speculation, and as connected with the several localities referred to.—J. B.] A PROVERB:— ‘Salisbury Plain Never without a thief or twain.’ As to the temper and complexion of the men and woemen, I have spoken before in the Prolegomena.