Analysis of Wines from Palestine, Si/ria, and Asia Minor. 177 



I wrote to some of the missionary brethren at Beyroot and Jeru- 

 salem on the subject. I now forward to Boston, to your address, a 

 box containing the following : — One bottle of wine from Mount 

 Lebanon, one year old, and another from the same place six 

 years old; two bottles from Hebron, age unknown; one -bottle 

 from Corfu, age unknown ; one bottle from Syria, place and ago 

 unknown ; one bottle from Cyprus, not old ; one bottle from Samos, 

 not old ; one bottle from Rhodes, one year old ; one bottle from 

 Smyrna, new, that is, about a year old. I hope the custom-house 

 officers will not open the box, and shall therefore write the contents 

 on the outside. But with all the precautions I have taken, I should 

 not be surprised should they all, or many of them, reach you soured. 

 Then, instead of your laboratory, they will take their place in your 

 store-room ; and whenever you have salad on your table, you will 

 please pour on the vinegar to my health — a sour health, to be sure !" 



Fortunately, this anticipation of Mr Van Lennep was not realised, 

 except that one of the bottles from Hebron contained considerable acetic 

 acid, probably because in passing through so many custom-houses, it 

 had been tested till nearly half of it was gone ; yet even this, as we 

 shall see, contained no small share of alcohol. All the other bottles, 

 on breaking their seals, were found in a healthy state. And I may 

 add, that in none of them could I discover any carbonic acid, so that 

 probably the process of fermentation had been completed. 



The mode of analysis was essentially that of Mr Brande. The 

 specific gravities were determined by ascertaining the weight of a 

 tubeful of the liquor, and comparing it with the same tube full of 

 distilled water, in all cases at a temperature of 60° Fah. The tube 

 which I employed held 736.4 grains of distilled water, and was sus- 

 pended from one of the arms of Chemin's delicate balances. The 

 weight of the tube and liquid was, indeed, rather too great for a 

 balance of this description, and I do not think I could be sure of the 

 weight nearer than one-tenth of a grain, although with small quan- 

 tities the one-hundredth of a grain was perceptible. After weighing 

 the tube full of wine, in order to obtain its specific gravity, it was 

 distilled nearly to dryness, from a small retort into a receiver sur- 

 rounded by snow, and afterwards, to make up for the deficiency, another 

 small portion of the wine was distilled also nearly to dryness. Enough 

 was thus obtained of the distilled liquor to fill the tube, which was 

 then weighed, and the specific gravity thence deduced. In deducing 

 from thence the per centum of alcohol, I used the new tables of 

 Tralles. founded upon the principles of those by Gilpin, and given 

 by Dr Ure in his Dictionary of the Arts, Manufactures, and Mines. 

 These tables assume that water at the temperature of 60° has a spe- 

 cific gravity of 0.9991 ; and they give the per centum of anhydrous 

 alcohol by measure. Hence they shew a smaller amount of alcohol 

 than those of Gilpin, used by Professors Brande and Beck, whose 

 standard is alcohol of the specific gravity of 0.825. But as Gilpin's 

 tables have been so commonly used, I have added a column of the 



VOL. XXXVII. NO. LXXIII. JULY 1844. M 



