getation. If the
acrospire be suffered to proceed, the mealy substance melts into a
liquid sweet, which soon passes into the blade, and leaves the husk
entirely exhausted. The sweet thus produced by the infant efforts of
vegetation, and lost by its more powerful action, revives, and makes a
second appearance in the stem, but is then too much dispersed and
altered in its form to answer any of the known purposes of art.

The periods of its perfect appearance are in both cases remarkably
critical. It is at first perfect at the instant the kernel is going to
send forth the acrospire, and form itself into the future blade; it is
again discovered perfect when the ear is labouring at its extrication,
and hastening the production of the yet unformed kernels; in this it
appears, the medium of nature's chemistry, equally employed by her in
her mutation of the kernel into the blade, and her formation thus of
other kernels, by which she effects the completion of that circle to
which the operations of the vegetable world are limited. Were we to
inquire by what means the same barley, with the same treatment,
produces unequal portions of the saccharine matter in different
situations, we should perhaps find it principally owing to the
different qualities of the water used in malting, some of which are so
much better suited to the quality of the grain than others, that the
difference is truly astonishing. Hard water is very unfit for every
purpose of vegetation, and soft will vary its effects according to the
predominating quality of its impregnations. Pure elementary water is in
itself supposed to be only the vehicle of the nutriment of plants,
entering at the capillary tubes of the roots rising into the body, and
here depositing its acquired virtues, perspiring by innumerable fine
pores at the surface, and thence evaporating by the purest distillation
into the open atmosphere, where it begins anew its rounds of collecting
fresh properties, in order to its preparation for fresh service. This
theory leads us to the consideration of an attempt to increase the
natural quantity of the saccharum of malt by adventitious means; but it
must be observed, on this occasion, that no addition to water will rise
into the vessels of plants, but such as will pass the filter, the pores
of which appearing somewhat similar to the fine strainers of absorbing
vessels employed by nature in her nicer operations; we by analogy
conclude, that properties so int