"THAT BAD BEVERAGE, BEER" 367 



crushed grapes might be set aside for future use, and discovered 

 later to contain a new drink, far more exhilarating than the 

 ordinary fresh juice of the grape. Thus may have arisen the 

 first connoisseur in vintages, tasting with delight the results of 

 Nature's handiwork, and realising, however dimly, that alcohol 

 could be produced by the mere crushing and leaving together 

 of the juice and skin of certain fruits, such as the grape, the 

 juice of which contains fermentable sugar, the skin carrying a 

 yeast capable of turning the sugar into alcohol and of converting 

 the sober juice into an intoxicating wine. 



In its widest sense, however, the term " wine" must be held 

 to include all alcoholic beverages which are derived from sugar- 

 yielding vegetable juices. Thus the coco-nut palm yields from 

 the cut stalks of its young inflorescences a juice called toddy, 

 which may be boiled down to sugar or allowed to ferment, 

 forming, when distilled, the drink known as " arrack." Other 

 palms yield similar beverages. Again, from the agave, or 

 American aloe, which is known to us as the " century plant " 

 and belongs to the Amaryllideae, the Mexicans obtain their 

 national drink " pulque " by extracting the sap of the flower bud 

 and allowing it to ferment. By these methods the juices of 

 various plants have been made palatable and their original use 

 as beverages belongs to a period of history so remote as to be 

 past reckoning. The common feature of the methods used in 

 the preparation of wine in its earliest form will be seen to lie 

 in the simple character of the processes employed, Nature being 

 allowed to operate with comparative freedom, undisturbed and 

 uncontrolled by any great exercise of man's intelligence. 



Such processes were easy enough in lands where fruit or 

 plants of a suitable character happened to be plentiful or easily 

 grown. In other regions one may suppose that the discovery 

 of a fermented drink had to await the development of human 

 intelligence up to the point of discovering how a fermentable 

 sugar could be obtained by the treatment of grain. That this 

 point was reached in very early times is shown by references 

 in Egyptian papyri dating back to three thousand years before 

 the Christian era; while Diodorus Siculus, in his history of 

 the world, written about 44 B.C., affirms that "wherever the 

 vine was not found in Egypt, Osiris taught the method of 

 preparing a corn wine from grain." Albeit Diodorus is held 

 to be an historian of easy veracity, his reference to Osiris is 



