tecting property, it is to be wished that the Prussian practice were extended to those portions of the civilised world, where it might be applicable, as it would save men from the labour and degradation of nightly watching.

The preparation of rosolio is an important branch of distillation at Dantzic. It is an agreeable spirit, composed of the juice of the plant ros solis, brandy, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, nutmegs, and other ingredients, and is in great demand in the German states. The rosolio of Dantzic is chiefly prepared from honey, blanched by exposure to frost, and afterwards washed with spirits. The honey thus prepared is hard and white as snow: the Italian rosolio is made by a nearly similar operation, and for which there are several distilleries at Leghorn. The people of Dantzic say, that the honey employed is procured from the forests of Kowno on the river Niemen, and its properties are principally attributable to the honey collected by the bees, which feed on the blossoms of the lime-trees in those forests. In Moldavia and the Ukraine, the Jews have a method of making honey into a hard and white sugar, which is employed by the distillers of, Dantzic in the manufacture of liqueurs. This process consists in exposing the honey to the frost during three weeks, sheltered from the sun and snow, in a vase of some material, which is a bad conductor of caloric. The honey does not freeze, and ultimately becomes transparent and hard as sugar. Rosolio is considered serviceable for paralysis and other disorders. Various seeds and aromatics are used by the distillers of that city, perhaps more than elsewhere for flavouring spirits. Kümmel, their favourite flavour, is that of the cumin, (Cuminum Cyminium) an annual indigenous plant of Egypt, but caraway or fennel (fæniculum) seeds, are generally mixed with cumin, and sometimes substituted for it, in the distillation of Kümmelwasser. Coriander seed, as well as Calamus aromaticus, (the acorus of botanists)* is also employed by the distillers of Dantzic, to correct the empyreumatic odour of spirits, and give a grateful and palatable aroma to the liquors with which they are incorporated.

Formerly a strong medicinal beer was made in Dantzic from the berries of the sweet-brier, which was found both salutary and agreeable; another description of liquor, called black beer, is made in that city and held in considerable estimation: it is a species of spruce beer, and is made in a manner similar to that practised in Canada.

Distilleries are numerous in Dantzic; many work from grain,

This is an odoriferous reed brought originally from India, but now found in the North of Europe and in North America.

others from molasses, and several from various saccharine materials. The stills are, for the most part, made of wood, steam being the chief In many, the machiagent; others are worked in the usual manner.

nery is curious, simple, and efficient.

The exports of corn-brandy from Dantzic in 1802, amounted to 1,098 ohms; and in 1804, to 14,312 florins and 276 ohms.

The imports of rum and French brandy in 1803, were 1,412 hogsheads; and in 1804, 1,383 ohms. Through the other principal ports of Prussia in 1804, 1,224 hogsheads of brandy were received.*

The excise raised on mead, malt, beer, wine, and spirituous liquors in the Polish part of Prussia is of some importance, but in no degree equal to the means they might possess of extending it. In the management of the distillery, the Prussians have not hitherto shown much skill. Most of their concerns are poor and ill adapted to the work. At Pillau, Elbing, Köningsberg, &c., the stills wrought some years since, were oblong squares of copper, generally about ten feet in length, three feet in width, and three feet in depth. Wood is the common fuel, though coal is plentiful, particularly in Silesia, and peat may be procured in some of the states in abundance. But as a too intimate acquaintance with the luxuries of life seldom contributes to the felicity of the human race, it is, perhaps, fortunate for these people that the great bulk of their agricultural produce is exported in the raw rather than in the refined state.

In the eastern part of Prussia, as no wine is made, the common beverage is beer or spirits from corn. The establishments for brewing and distilling are consequently numerous, but some of them approach in magnitude to those of England. The whole quantity of beer that is brewed is 4,243,000 fass, or casks of 50 gallons each. The consumption of corn-brandy is, on an average, 8,000,000 gallons annually.

In Berlin, there is a description of malt drink called White Beer, made from a mixture of wheat and barley malted in the ratio of five parts, (3.83 quarters) of the former to 0.76 quarters of the latter, with about nine barrels of liquor at the temperature of 95°. The wheaten malt is considered requisite for the sake of the flavour and colour. This mixture is mashed for about thirty minutes, during which five or six barrels of liquor nearly boiling are conveyed from the copper into the tun, after which the mashing is kept up for fifteen minutes longer; the heat of the mash being at 126°. In an hour after, fifteen pounds of hops, mixed with two barrels of worts taken from the top of the kieve, are boiled in the copper for a quarter of an hour, during which four barrels more of worts are added, making in all six barrels in the

Oddy on European Commerce, 4to. Vide Addenda.

copper. The whole, with the exception of a barrel left to keep the bottom from burning, is returned to the kieve at a heat of 201°, and after a few minutes' mashing is allowed to stand half an hour, the heat at this period being 153°. Six barrels more from the top of the kieve are now put into the copper and raised to a heat of 205°; the contents of both copper and kieve, grains included, are then thrown into a vessel called a tap-tun having a false bottom covered with straw, the temperature being then 167°. Having remained undisturbed in this vessel about fifteen minutes, the cock between the real and false bottom is opened, but in so small a degree in order to render the liquor the finer, that it requires seven hours to draw it off. At this stage, six barrels of liquor are added and the whole is pumped into the coolers, from which it is sent to the fermenting tun at a heat of 72°, when a gallon of yeast is added and in two hours fermentation commences. In the space of eight or ten hours it is put into casks and delivered to the traders, with whom the fermentation is finished generally in three days; on the fifth it is bunged, is bottled on the ninth, and is drinkable on the fourteenth or fifteenth day. By this practice the manufacturer is a dependent for a supply of barm, either on his own or the customers of other brewers.

From the proportion and quantity of grain stated, 18 barrels of beer are usually obtained; this drink seldom requires fining, is well flavoured, and will keep for six months.

Between Dresden and Meissen, the vineyards which adorn the banks of the Elbe are the property of the king, and the wine which they yield is in higher estimation than any other in his dominions. In the whole of Prussia, it is estimated that there are 36,908 acres employed in vineyards. Hops are raised in Brandenburgh, Pomerania, Silesia, West Prussia, Saxony, and on the Rhine, in sufficient quantities to supply the inhabitants within the kingdom: the average quantity produced is annually about 550,000 bushels, which are sold by measure. The wines are calculated to be from 390,000 to 420,000 eimers; an eimer being fifteen gallons. In Brunswick, there are eighty or ninety breweries of mum and beer, with about thirty-two distilleries from corn. In Königslutter, there are nine distilleries of ardent spirits. In Magdeburgh and Genthin are distilleries and brew

eries.

In Berlin, within the walls, are one hundred and forty-three distilleries and forty-two breweries.

In Wurzen and Potsdam, there are considerable breweries which engage a great number of the inhabitants. The vineyards about Lutzen in Saxony, although affording abundance of grapes, yield but an indifferent description of wine; and, therefore, it is more profitably applied

in making vinegar and brandy. At Weimar, breweries and distilleries are chiefly employed to supply the city, though there is a great trade in corn. In Saxe-Gotha, aniseseed and cumminseed are raised to considerable extent and converted into essential oil, which is in great demand for the flavouring of spirits.

In Silesia, ale-houses are numerous, and no postillion drives a stage without stopping to enjoy a schnap-an irresistible temptation, since every ale-house hangs out a board with the seductive salutation, "Willkommer mein Freund"—Welcome, my Friend!

In the neighbourhood of Hirschberg, there is a spring so impregnated with oxygen, that the common people crowd to it on Sundays to intoxicate themselves cheaply.

In Germany, honey is an abundant production. The number of bee-hives in Prussia alone, are estimated at 521,000, and the sales of the honey bring yearly about £356,091.

It was customary among the superior class of the Teutones, (an ancient people of Germany) to drink mead for a period of thirty days after marriage. From this practice is probably derived the familiar expression, "to spend the honeymoon." Hence mead may be classed amongst the most ancient and favourite beverages of the Germans, as proved by the testimony of Pytheas already noticed. Next in antiquity is the beer described by Tacitus; but it is highly probable that cider may dispute the precedency, as Tatian, a writer of the second century, makes frequent allusion to it as a common drink among the Helvetians.

Throughout Poland, all the distilleries are farmed exclusively to the Jews by the nobles, who receive large sums for granting this privilege. One nobleman has been known to receive £3000 annually for leave to distil on one of the largest of his estates. The liquors manufactured by them are corn spirits usually drunk without water. The wash, previous to the distillation, is mixed with the essential oils of fennel and caraway seeds, to render the spirits more palatable, and of which enormous quantities are consumed to the real injury of the morals of the people. This led Joseph II., when he obtained possession of Galitzia, to prohibit the Jews from either pruning the vines or distilling spirits; but these regulations were disregarded after his death, and the Jews are now sole masters of this branch of commerce. Every traveller in Poland must lament the drunkenness of the peasantry, particularly as it is effected by the avarice of the nobles, since according to the excesses of the people, the larger are the returns to the lords of the soil.*

"Neale's Travels through Germany, Poland, Moldavia, and Turkey.

The present Farmer-General (1837) is M. Steinzler, a banker at Warsaw, who has purchased a lease of the liquors for twenty years, for which he paid 7,600,000 florins, or £182,400 sterling; therefore the same monoply is to be continued for the aggrandisement of an individual, to the degradation of the community.

The cheap whiskey of the country is drunk by the Polish peasantry in enormous quantities, whenever they can obtain it. "I was informed," says Jacob, “and had reason to credit the accounts, that when the peasants brought to the market-towns their trifling quantities of produce, a part of the money was first used to purchase salt, and the rest spent in whiskey, in a state of intoxication that commonly endured till the exhaustion of the purse had restored them to sobriety."

There is no duty on the spirits sold in the country portions of Poland; and the supply of that commodity, in a populous neighbourhood, affords a profit, unequal, however, to the interest of the capital invested in the soil, the farming stock, utensils, and other requisites, added to the expense of erecting the distillery. The spirit from corn is sold in the country at ten-pence per gallon; but on paying a high duty, or being a subject of monopoly farmed by the government to distillers, on the entrance of the cities and towns, it is retailed in them from three shillings, to three shillings and six-pence per gallon. The duty on beer is collected by the brewers to whom it is farmed by the government.

Tra

In Lithuania, spirits are consumed to a considerable extent. vellers say, that every town on the road sells spirits, and that the lower orders are seen to stop and take their schnaps; even women carry a private bottle, and when they meet, apply it to each other's mouths, and separate after a reciprocation of kisses. When travelling on horseback, they do not forget their favourite beverage, and observe the same ceremonies in drinking as when on foot.

When Buonaparte had control over Poland, he encouraged the culture of white beet in order to obtain sugar with a view to injure the British trade in that article; but the experiment was of short duration, as it is not now cultivated for such a purpose.

The propagation of bees is an object of great attention with the Poles, and their honey is classed under three heads, namely, lipiec, leszny, stepowey prasznymird, each of which deserves particular notice. Lipiec honey is the produce of bees that feed only on a species of lime-tree of the genus talia, called kamienna lipsa, or stone lime. It is held in high estimation on account of its efficacy in the cure of affections of the chest, particularly those connected with the lungs; it

Report on the Trade in Corn, &c. of Northern Europe.