"is by Strabo reckoned nine hundred stadia, or one hundred and twelve miles and a half in circuit, and about four hundred stadia, or fifty miles, from the island of Mytelene. The principal mountain, called by the ancients Pelinæus, presents to view a long lofty range of bare rock, reflecting the sun's rays, but toward its base it is well cultivated, and rewards the labours of the husbandman by its rich produce. The slopes are clothed with vines; the groves of lemon, orange and citron trees, regularly planted, at once perfume the air with the odour of their blossoms, and delight the eye with their golden fruit. Myrtles and jessamines are interspersed with cypresses, olive, and palm trees; amidst these the tall minares rise, and white houses glitter, dazzling the beholder." It is, however, a considerable deduction from the happiness which the inhabitants of so delightful a spot might otherwise enjoy, that the island is very subject to earthquakes. The vineyards of Scio have been ever celebrated. They still form a considerable part of the riches of this island: its wines, so boasted of by the ancients, continue to deserve their reputation; and immortalized by Virgil, still taste sweet in song.'-ECL. V. Ante focum, si frigus erit; si messis, in umbra; The ritual feast shall overflow with wine, WARTON. In some parts of the MARK OF Brandenburg the inhabitants apply themselves to the cultivation of the yine. Near Potsdam are a great number of vineyards, for the planting of which the Elector Frederick William caused layers to be brought from the best wine countries. The south side of the county of Hohenlohe, in the circle of FRANCONIA, has vineyards extending several miles. Vines are much cultivated in ITALY. In autumn the vintage is a time of general festivity, when the common people give themselves up to all manner of licentiousness. The SPANISH Wines, particularly sack, are eagerly bought up by foreign nations; and the value of the wines and raisins annually exported out of the country, about Malaga alone, amounts to a million and a half of piastres, an imaginary coin of about three shillings and seven-pence value. The wine produced in the kingdom of Old Castile is excellent. The country round Malaga is covered with vines and the greatest variety of fruit; it yields a very beautiful prospect, both from the land and sea. Their wines, raisins, oranges, lemons, almonds, figs, and other fruit, are well known, from the large quantities imported to England, beside those sent into other parts of Europe; so that the duties paid to the king, are computed to produce annually eight hundred thousand ducats. The grape which produces the wine of PORTUGAL, is chiefly cultivated near Oporto, and hence is derived the name of Port Wine. FRANCE produces great abundance and variety of wines, the cultivation of th evine having been attended to in almost all the provinces, and is probably not less regarded since the revolution in that country. Among the several French wines, that of Champagne is most esteemed, it being a good stomachic, racy, and in taste and flavour exquisite, with an agreeable tartness. That of Burgundy, the best of which is produced about Beaume, has a fine colour, and pleasant taste. The wines of Angers and Orleans are also delicate, but heady. In Poictou is produced a white wine that resembles Rhenish. The neighbourhood of Bourdeaux, and the lower parts of Gascony, produce excellent wines. Pontac grows in Guienne. Muscadel and Frontignac are the delicious products of Languedoc. Between Valence and St. Valiere, along the banks of the Rhone, is produced a very agreeable, but roughish red wine, that has a taste not unlike that of bilberries; it is named hermitage, and is considered as very wholesome. Sterne calls the Bourbonnois "the sweetest part of France ;" and speaks in raptures of travelling through it "in the hey-day of the vintage, when nature is pouring her abundauce into every one's lap. A journey, through each step of which music beats time to labour, and all her children are rejoicing as they carry in their clusters." [Chandler. Hawksworth. Kindersley. Pantologia. SECTION XIII. Sugar. Sugar is produced, to a certain extent, by almost all vegetables, and from different parts of the plant, but chiefly the stem, root, and flower; and there are many of them in which the quantity is sufficient to enable the grower to collect, concentrate, and purify it for use. Of these the chief are the saccharum officinarum, or sugar-cane; the acer saccharinum, or sugar-maple, and a variety of beta, denominated the red beet-root. Besides these, the inhabitants of New Spain procure sugar from the agave Americana, and others from the asclepias syriaca, and zea mays, or Indian corn. Nor are the inhabitants of high northern latitudes wholly destitute of vegetables which furnish this useful article; for at Kamschatka it is obtained from the heraleum syphondylium, and the fucus saccharinus. Sugar, when pure, is perfectly transparent; and if crystallized, colourless; but when granular, of a pure glossy white, soluble in water and alcohol, without smell, and with the taste of simple sweetness, totally void of flavour. It melts by heat into a clear, yellowish, tenacious liquid; and when kindled, burns with a strong flame, and a very pungent acid vapour. With the nitric acid it is convertible chiefly into the oxalic acid. It is a most powerful antiseptic, and is one of the most grateful and (when in mixture) one of the most nutritive of all the alimentary substances derived from the vegetable kingdom. Sugar is never found pure, and very rarely in a state approaching to purity; for it is always intimately combined with mucilage and other vegetable principles, to which it largely imparts its peculiar taste. Cane Sugar. Saccharum officinarum.-LINN. The plant from which this useful material is commonly obtained is the saccharum officinarum of Linnæus. It is prepared from the expressed juice boiled with the addition of quick-lime or common vegetable alkali. It may be extracted also from a number of plants, as the maple, birch, wheat corn, beet-root, skirret, parsnips, dried grapes, &c. by digesting in alcohol. The alcohol dissolves the sugar, and leaves the extractive matter untouched, which falls to the bottom. It may be taken into the stomach in very large quantities, without producing any bad consequences, although proofs are not wanting of its mischievous effects, by relaxing the stomach, and thus inducing disease. It is much used in pharmacy, as it forms the basis of syrups, lozenges, and other preparations. It is very useful as a medicine, to favour the solution or suspension of resins, oils, &c. in water, and is given as a purgative for infants. Sugar is every where the basis of that which is called sweetness. Its presence is previously necessary, in order to the taking place of vinous fermentation. Its extraction from plants which afford it in the greatest abundance, and its refinement for the common uses of life, in a pure and separate state, are among the most important of the chemical manufactures. The sugar-cane, however, yields sugar in a proportion so much larger than that in which the same matter is to be obtained from any other, that only this cane has been as yet cultivated expressly for the purpose of affording sugar to the extraction of the manufacturer. This cane has been from the most ancient times known in Asia. Of its produce, some small proportion appears to have been, during the greatness of ancient Rome, imported by circuitous channels into Europe. In the progress of the subsequent ages, the plant itself became known in Europe, and was introduced into cultivation. Before the data of the discovery of America, it was no uncommon cultivation in Spain: the Spaniards carried out plants of the sugar cane to America; but the plant had been, even before, propagated in this hemisphere. They had not long been seated in their new colonial territories before they made sugar a principal article in their agriculture and manufacture. It has continued ever since to be the principal produce of the European colonial territories in the West India isles. It is produced also in very large quantities in the East. The Anglo-Americans extract it from the maple-tree. The cane is a produce of all the South Sea isles of late discovery. The following is the mode of its manufacture in the West Indies. The plants are cultivated in rows, on fields enriched by such ma. nures as can most easily be procured, and tilled with the plough. They are annually cut. The cuttings are carried to the mill. They are cut into short pieces, and arranged in small bundles. The mill is wrought by water, wind, or cattle. The parts which act on the canes are upright cylinders. Between these the canes are in serted, compressed, squeezed till all their juice is obtained from them, and are themselves, sometimes, even reduced to powder. One of these mills, of the best construction, bruises canes to such a quantity as to afford in one day, 10,000 gallons of juice, when wrought with only ten mules. The expressed juice is received into a leaden bed. It is thence conveyed into a vessel called the receiver. The juice is found to consist of eight parts of pure water, one part of sugar, one part of oil and gummy mucilage. From the greener parts of the canes there is apt to be at times derived an acid juice, which tends to bring the whole unseasonably into a state of acid fermentation. Fragments of the ligneous part of the cane, some portions of mud or dirt, which unavoidably remain on the canes, and a blackish substance called the crust, which coated the canes at the joints, are also apt to enter into contaminating mixture with the juice. From the receiver the juice is conducted along a wooden gutter, lined with lead, to, the boiling-house. In the boiling-house it is received into copper pans, or cauldrons, which have the name of clarifiers. Of these clarifiers the number and the capacity must be proportioned to the quantity of canes, and the extent of the sugar Each clarifier has a plantation on which the work is carried on. syphon or cock, by which the liquor is to be drawn off. Each hangs over a separate fire: and this fire must be so confined, that by the drawing of an iron slider, fitted to the chimney, the fire may at any time be put out. In the progress of the operations, the stream of juice from the receiver fills the clarifier with fresh liquor. Lime in powder is added, in order to take up the oxalic acid, and the carbonaceous matters which are mingled with the juice. The lime also in the new salts, into the composition of which it now enters, adds itself to the sugar, as a part of that which is to be retained by the process. The lime is to be used in the proportion of somewhat less than a pint of this substance to every hundred gallons of liquor. When it is in too great quantities, however, it is apt to destroy a part of the pure saccharine matter. Some persons employ alkaline ashes, as preferable to lime, for the purpose of extracting the extraneous matter; but it is highly probable that lime, judiciously used, might answer better than any other substance whatsoever. The liquor is now to be heated almost to ebullition. The heat dissolves the mechanical union, and thus favours the chemical changes in its differens parts. When the proper heat appears, from a rising |