acted on by the condensed air. This air, rising through a pipe, collects at the top of the cylinder, and in that way it is prevented from interfering with the steady flow of the shower. A slight circulation of the air is at the same time promoted. On the process being completed, the liquor is run into casks, and the air which remains in the vessel is allowed to escape, the quantity of alcohol in combination with it not being worth saving.

The object of this process is to bring about the oxidation of the essential oils contained in the whiskey or other spirit, and to promote their conversion into ethers. It is claimed that this transformation does take place, and that the spirit is changed from a new spirit, and has all the character, mellowness, and flavour of that matured by time. This change is said to be effected in twenty-four hours, and that the spirit has, in that period, put on a maturity of ten years.

RUM.

Derivation of Name-Whence Procured-Its Manufacture-Its Price-Trade Rum.

THE

HE etymon of the name of this spirit is somewhat dubious. Some have it that it was formerly spelt (as it now is in French) Rhum, and that it is derived from rheum, or peûua, a flowing, on account of its manufacture from the juice of the sugar cane. Others say that, as rum has the strongest odour of any distilled spirit, it is a corruption of the word aroma.

Rum is made from the refuse of sugar, and can, of course, be produced wherever sugar is grown. This is notably the case in the West Indies, and the best rum comes thence. The finest, and that commanding the highest price in the market, is from Jamaica; Martinique and Guadaloupe perhaps come next; and Santa Cruz has a very good name. British Guiana, the Brazils, Natal, Queensland, and New South Wales all produce it.

It is made from molasses and the skimmings of the boiling sugar. Molasses is the syrup remaining after

:

the separation of all the saccharine matter which will crystallize, and is a dense, viscous liquid, varying from light yellow to nearly black, according to the source from which it is obtained; but its distillation will not produce rum. Sugar or molasses, if distilled, will produce alcohol, but it will have no character of rum. This peculiar odour is imparted to it by the addition, in distillation, of "skimmings," which are the matters separated from the sugar in clarifying and evaporation; that is to say, the scum of the precipitators, clarifiers and evaporators is mixed with the rinsing of the boiling pans, and is thus called. They contain all the necessaries of fermentation, and when mixed with molasses and "dunder," which is the fermented wash left from distillation, are distilled into

rum.

The odour of rum is very volatile; so much so, that it should be casked immediately after distillation. The raw spirit is extremely injurious; but it improves so much by age that, at a sale in Carlisle in 1865, rum, known to be 140 years old, sold at three guineas a bottle. Like all alcohol, rum, when distilled, is white, the colour being given to it, as it used to be in brown brandy, by caramel (burnt sugar). Much of the rum sold in England is made from "silent spirit, flavoured with butyric ether; and it is this stuff which is sold as "trade rum" for export to Africa. Some years since an action was brought by an African merchant against the vendor of "trade rum" for damages caused by it to his trade. All went merrily till the negroes drank the rum, when it suddenly

ceased, owing to its colouring their excreta red, probably owing to the colouring matter.

In the old days of punch drinking, rum was the great ingredient in that beverage, but its use has gradually died out, except among sailors, it still being served out in the navy, on account of its supposed warming qualities. Rum and milk, taken before breakfast, is also a beverage used very extensively.

Derivation of Term-Eichhoff-Gregory of Tours-Liqueur Wines -Herb Wines-Scot's Ivanhoe-Hydromel-Murrey-Delille -Montaigne-Monastical Liqueurs-Arnold de VilleneuveCatherine de Medicis-Elixir Ratafia.

THE

HE word liqueur has been traced by Eichhoff to a Sanskrit root, viz., laks or lauc, to see, appear. It is now commonly understood of a drink obtained by distillation, a beverage of which alcohol is the base.

To the ancients liqueurs appear to have been unknown. The art of distillation on which they depend was not apparently discovered till the middle ages. Fermented wines, of which some description will be found in another part of this book, occupied their place at dinner and dessert. Old Falernian when mixed with honey probably bore some near resemblance to what is now understood by liqueur. But this drink was found to have such disastrous effects by way of intoxication that it was forbidden to women to drink of it.

Our ancestors, perhaps in imitation of the ancients, composed a sort of liqueur with the must of wine, in