the temperature of the cellar remaining the same: on the third morning, both the liquor and cellar were at forty-five degrees, no signs of fermentation having yet appeared. The liquor was then placed before a fire for some hours, and fermentation began; it was then removed to the cellar, and on the fourth day the fermentation was going on steadily but slowly, at forty-eight degrees. I have never made wine when the heat of the air was above seventy degrees; and, on the whole, I prefer a temperature of from fifty-five to sixty degrees. That of the liquor, after the second day, continues about two degrees above that of the cellar, till the eighth or ninth day, when the fermentation has usually become languid, and the heat of the liquor, and of the cellar, scarcely differ more than one degree.

The liquor is now vinous, but sweet; and, after carefully skimming it, I transfer it to glass carboys, containing about six or seven gallons, or to stoneware barrels, of the same size*. I insert in the bungs glass tubes of safety; and, on the second day, pour into them about an inch of quicksilver, to exclude the air. The cement that I use for covering the bungs, is a mixture of wax and resin.

Carbonic acid continues to bubble through the quicksilver in the safety tube for some weeks; after which, it ceases; but the column of quicksilver in the exterior leg of the syphon, is always higher than that in the interior leg. I have never seen a single instance of the outer air passing into the carboy.

The loss during the fermentation in the tun, is about six per cent.; subject, however, to variations from the temperature of the liquor, from the scum being removed once or oftener, and from the cover of the tun being left on or off.

I think the wine ought to remain an entire summer in the barrel or carboy, in order that the fermentation may proceed so far as almost entirely to decompose the sugar;

* As barrels of stoneware are always more or less porous, they should be warmed thoroughly before a fire, and be rubbed over with a mixture of bees' wax and turpentine (about one part of turpentine to three of bees' wax): when this coating is grown cold, it should be well rubbed in with a hard brush.

and as my usual times of wine making are April and October, that made in the former month is bottled in the March following; and that made in October, is bottled about the end of September, or a week or two later, according to circumstances.

I never fine the wine, being of opinion that the light dry wine, which it is my aim to produce, would be materially injured by being deprived of its tannin, through the action of isinglass, or of any similar substance.

At the time of bottling, I have seldom observed the wine to have any very sensible flaxour,-meaning by flavour, that compound sensation of smell and taste, which characterises the finer kinds of wines; but after remaining for a year in bottle, a flavour resembling elder flowers is strongly developed, mingled, generally, in a slight degree, with that of prussic acid.

As soon as the wine begins to run turbid from the carboy, I pass the whole of what remains through a filter; but though I am careful that the wine, when bottled, should be clear, though not bright, there is always more or less of flocculent matter deposited, which requires the bottles to be set upright in the bin, and to be decanted with care.

The wine, when first decanted, is often of a very pale yellow colour, especially if high flavoured; but in an hour or two it deepens more or less, and at length acquires a tint like that of Bucellas, the prussic acid flavour at the same time disappearing.

Instead of mashing, as above described, I have sometimes pursued a still more simple way,-that of maceration; by mixing in the fermenting tun the usual proportions of chopped raisins and sugar with cold water, and leaving the raisings in the liquor during the whole of the first fermentation. By this method I obtain a higher-coloured wine; but, the fermentation being generally slower, and consequently longer, it is destitute of that Frontignac, or elderflower, flavour, which it generally acquires when treated according to the first process; and is apt to get a less

agreeable flavour from the husks of the raisins. Sometimes, however, the method succeeds very well; and the elder-flower flavour not being pleasant to many persons, such wine is more generally acceptable than the former.

In May, 1827, I made some wine in the way last described. The materials were put together on the 3rd day of the month, the temperature of the liquor and of the cellar being fifty-six degrees. On the 5th, at night, fermentation had just began, the temperature of the liquor and cellar being fifty-seven degrees. On the 7th, the liquor was at fifty-eight degrees. From that time to the 19th, the fermentation went on, though languidly, the temperature of the liquor varying from fifty-seven to fifty-eight and a half degrees; and that of the cellar from fifty-five to fifty-seven degrees. From the 19th to the 24th, the weather became warm, the temperature of the cellar rose to fifty-nine degrees, and that of the liquor to sixty-one degrees. It had now been twenty-one days under fermentation; and therefore, though it was still rather too sweet, I put it into carboys, and bottled it about half a year afterwards. This wine is now (December, 1828) strong, darkcoloured, for white wine, but still rather sweet, and tastes too much of the husks.

XXVI. On the Importance of Improving the Art of ShipBuilding *.

IN no period of the world, has the subject of naval architecture had higher claims on public attention than the present, and to our own country in particular, it is an art of such transcendant importance, that no means should be left untried. Nor is it only in a commercial point of view, that ship-building is valuable to man, since, by the enterprise that fortunately characterizes the modern navigator, the ocean is become one of the high roads of civilization, perhaps

Abridged from a notice on the Article SHIP-BUILDING; published in vol. XVIII. part I, of the Edinburgh Encyclopedia. Edited by Dr. BREWSTER.

the highest; and, therefore, in the successful cultivation of the various arts connected with navigation and commerce, every lover of human improvement must feel an interest, proportionate to the influence which they are now universally allowed to exercise on the improving destiny of man.

Naval architecture may be contemplated under three points of view. First, as regards the means it affords for the purposes of war; secondly, as it relates to commercial enterprise and speculation; and, thirdly, as it is connected with human improvement, the enlargement of geographical knowledge, and the extension of the blessings of civilization. The cultivation of the first is unfortunately rendered necessary by the peculiar condition of the world, and perhaps the second and third are in some degree assisted by it; but it is the successful advancement of the latter that renders the study of naval architecture most pleasing, and elevates it to rank with those arts which minister so essentially to the happiness and well being of man.

The author of the article under consideration has contemplated his subject in the most general points of view. Omitting the early history of the art, the materials for which are abundantly supplied by Charnock and others, he advances at once to its leading and essential elements, and connects, in a comprehensive form, the labours of Bouguer and Euler, with those of Atwood, Chapman, and Seppings. Ship-building, though an imperfect art, has many great and celebrated names connected with its history. Assuming, for the first time, in the latter part of the seventeeth century, a scientific form, in consequence of the labours of Paul Haste, in his Theorie de la Construction des Vaisseaux, we find it afterwards enriched by the labours of many mathematicians; and the masterly improvements of Seppings in our own times, has added to it a perfection it never before possessed. The creation of the College of Naval Architecture, in Portsmouth Dock-Yard, has also communicated to it a great impulse. It cannot now be said, to adopt the language of the author, when

speaking of its former condition, that the torch of geometry does not illuminate its path, or that the maxims of mechanical science are not applied to its daily practice. Inquiry has been awakened, and the antiquated rules, which formerly guided our ship-builders, are now gradually giving way to methods, authorized by the legitimate deductions of science. It is a mighty and comprehensive problem, to contemplate all the essential elements connected with the construction of so massive and stupendous a fabric as a ship, destined for all the terrible purposes of war, which, in the magnificent voyages it undertakes, has to cross wide and immeasurable seas, agitated at times by the unbridled fury of the wind, subjecting it to strains of the most formidable kind; which shall possess mechanical strength to resist these, and at the same time be adapted for stowage and velocity, which is expected in all cases to overtake the enemy, and yet must contain within it the materiel for a six month's cruize. These, and many other complicated inquiries, which the naval architect has to contemplate, must all be involved in the general conditions of his problem, the elements of which he must estimate, while he is rearing his mighty fabric in the dock, and be prepared to anticipate their effects, when he launches his vessel on the turbulent bosom of the sea. And yet there are men, blind to the experience of the past, who deny that science has any thing to do with the construction of a ship. Science, says the eloquent author of the article, is the basis of every well ordered machine. Science was the ground work of all that Watt, Smeaton, or Wren ever achieved; and can science, says he, be unnecessary in the formation of a ship? We must say in reply, that science is absolutely necessary in the construction of a ship, and we cordially agree with the writer, that the college of naval architecture is likely to prove a most beneficial institution to the country. In the year 1795, we find that the commissioners appointed to revise the civil affairs of the navy, remarked, that the class of persons from whom the master ship-wrights and sur