372 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



agree that the climate is especially favorable to longevity, provided 

 bitter beer, and all other alcoholic drinks, all peppery condiments, and 

 flesh foods, are avoided. The most remarkable example of vigorous 

 old age I have ever met was a retired colonel eighty-two years of age, 

 who had risen from the ranks, and had been fifty-five years in India 

 without furlough ; drank no alcohol during that period ; was a vege- 

 tarian in India, though not so in his native land. I guessed his age 

 to be somewhere about sixty. He was a Scotchman, and an ardent 

 student of the works of both George and Dr. Andrew Combe. 



While still seasonable I add by way of postscript a receipt for a 

 dish lately invented by my wife. It is vegetable marrow au gratin, 

 prepared by simply boiling the vegetable as usual, slicing it, placing 

 the slices in a dish, covering them with grated cheese, and then brown- 

 ing slightly in an oven or before the fire, as in preparing the well- 

 known ''cauliflower au gratiny I have modified this (with improve- 

 ment, I believe) by mashing the boiled marrow and stirring the gi'ated 

 cheese into the midst of it while as hot as possible ; or, better still, by 

 adding a little milk, a pinch of bicarbonate of potash, mixing with the 

 cheese, and then returning this puree to the saucepan, heating and 

 stirring it there for a few minutes to effect the complete solution of 

 the cheese. This dish is not so pretty as that au gratin browned in 

 orthodox fashion, but is more digestible. 



XLIII. — THE COOKERY OP WIXE. 



In an unguarded moment I promised to include the above in this 

 series, and will do the best I can to fulfill the promise ; but the utmost 

 result of this effort can only be a contribution to the subject which is 

 too profoundly mysterious to be fully grasped by any intellect that is 

 not sufficiently clairvoyant to penetrate paving-stones and see through 

 them to the interiors of the closely tiled cellars wherein the mysteries 

 are manipulated. 



I will first define what I mean by the cookery of wine. Grape- 

 juice in its unf ermented state may be described as " raw wine," or this 

 name may be applied to the juice after fermentation. I apply it in 

 the latter sense, and shall use it as describing grape-juice which has 

 been spontaneously and recently fermented without the addition of 

 any foreign materials, or altered by keeping, or heating, or any other 

 process beyond fermentation. All such processes and admixtures which 

 effect any chemical changes on the raw material I shall describe as 

 cookery, and the result as cooked wine. When wine made from 

 other juice than that of the grape is referred to it will be named spe- 

 cifically. 



At the outset a fallacy, very prevalent in this country, should be 

 controverted. The high prices charged for the cooked material sold 

 to Englishmen has led to absurdly exaggerated notions of the original 

 value of wine. I am quite safe in stating that the average market 



