ion.

Although we cannot actually make wine at this moment, it will be easy to
show you the mode of analyzing it. This is done by distillation. When
wine of any kind is submitted to this operation, it is found to contain
brandy, water, tartar, extractive colouring matter, and some vegetable
acids. I have put a little port wine into this alembic of glass (PLATE
XIV. Fig. 1.), and on placing the lamp under it, you will soon see the
spirit and water successively come over--

[Illustration: Plate XIV. Vol. II. p. 213.

Fig. 1.
A Alembic.
B Lamp.
C Wine glass.

Fig. 2. Alcohol blowpipe.
D the Lamp.
E the vessel in which the Alcohol is boiling.
F a safety valve.
G the inflamed jet or steam of alcohol directed towards a glass
tube H.]

EMILY.

But you do not mention alcohol amongst the _products_ of the
distillation of wine; and yet that is its most essential ingredient?

MRS. B.

The alcohol is contained in the brandy which is now coming over, and
dropping from the still. Brandy is nothing more than a mixture of
alcohol and water; and in order to obtain the alcohol pure, we must
again distil it from brandy.

CAROLINE.

I have just taken a drop on my finger; it tastes like strong brandy, but
it is without colour, whilst brandy is of a deep yellow.

MRS. B.

It is not so naturally; in its pure state brandy is colourless, and it
obtains the yellow tint you observe, by extracting the colouring matter
from the new oaken casks in which it is kept. But if it does not acquire
the usual tinge in this way, it is the custom to colour the brandy used
in this country artificially, with a little burnt sugar, in order to
give it the appearance of having been long kept.

CAROLINE.

And is rum also distilled from wine?

MRS. B.

By no means; it is distilled from the sugar-cane, a plant which contains
so great a quantity of sugar, that it yields more alcohol than almost
any other vegetable. After the juice of the cane has been pressed out
for making sugar, what still remains in the bruised cane is extracted by
water, and this watery solution of sugar is fermented, and produces rum.

The spirituous liquor called _arack_ is in a similar manner distilled
from the product of the vinous fermentation of rice.

EMILY.

But rice has no sweetness; does it contain any sugar?

MRS. B.

Like barley and most other seeds, it is insipid until it has undergone
the saccharine fermentation; and this, yo