43° 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



corks under him, his clothes being bound 

 upon his head, and was fortunate enough 

 to succeed in the attempt. The use of 

 cork for stoppers was not entirely unknown 

 to the Romans, and instances of its being 

 thus employed may be seen in Cato's " De 

 Re Rustica," cap. cxx. ; but its application 

 to this purpose seems not to have been 

 very common, or cork stoppers would have 

 been oftener mentioned by authors who 

 have written on agriculture and cookery, 

 and also in the works of ancient poets. 

 The convivial customs of those days had 

 no connection with the bottle, glass bot- 

 tles being of a much later invention. In- 

 stead of having dozens of sparkling cham- 

 pagne or hock, to be hberated from the 

 bottle by the corkscrew, at their feasts, the 

 guests filled their drinking - cups of gold, 

 silver, crystal, or beech-wood from a two- 

 handled amphora, a kind of earthenware 

 pitcher in which their choice wines used to 

 be kept. The mouths of these vessels 

 were stopped with wood, and covered with 

 a mastic, composed of pitch, chalk, and 

 oil, to prevent air spoiling the wine or 

 evaporation taking place. Columella, who 

 wrote one of the earliest works on agricul- 

 ture, gives directions for preparing this ce- 

 ment. Pliny, in describing the cork-tree, 

 says it is smaller than the oak, and its 

 acorns of the very worst quality. He tells 

 us the cork-tree did not grow throughout 

 Italy, and in no part whatever of Gaul. At 

 the present day it is abundant in France, 

 and Fee states that the acorns of Qnercus 

 snber are of an agreeable flavor, and the 

 hams of Bayonne are said to owe their 

 high reputation from the pigs having fed 

 on the acorns of the cork-tree. Some an- 

 cient authors speak of the cork-tree as the 

 female of the holm-oak ( Qnercus ilex), and 

 in countries where the holm does not grow, 

 they used to substitute the wood of the cork- 

 tree. 



Traditional Origin of Social Distinctions. 



— In the latter part of the fourteenth cen- 

 tury social distinctions became the subject 

 of theological controversy in England — the 

 Lollards, a religious association including 

 large numbers of the common people, main- 

 taining the natural equality of man ; while 

 the Roman Catholic preachers, on the other 



hand, encouraged the belief that the divi- 

 sion of society into distinct classes was a 

 permanent judgment of God, the origin of 

 which, according to Alexander Barclay, a 

 poetical writer in the reign of Henry VII., 

 they thus accounted for : '* One day, while 

 Adam was absent occupied with his agri- 

 cultural labors. Eve sat at home on their 

 threshold with all her children about her, 

 when suddenly she became aware of the 

 approach of the Creator, and ashamed of the 

 great number of them, and fearful that her 

 productiveness might be misinterpreted, she 

 hurriedly concealed those which were the 

 least well-favored ; ' some of them she placed 

 under hay, some under straw and chaff, 

 some in the chimney, and some in a tub of 

 draff; but such as were fair and well made 

 she wisely and cunningly kept with her.' 

 God told her that he had come to see her 

 children that he might promote them in 

 their different degrees, upon which she pre- 

 sented them in the order of their birth. 

 God then ordained the eldest to be an em- 

 peror, the second to be a king, and the third 

 a duke to guide an army ; of the rest he 

 made earls, lords, barons, squires, knights, 

 and hardy champions ; some he appointed 

 to be 'judges, mayors, and governors, mer- 

 chants, sheriffs and protectors, aldermen 

 and burgesses.' While all this was going on, 

 Eve began to think of her other children, 

 and unwilling that they should lose their 

 share of honors, she now produced them 

 from their hiding-places. They appeared, 

 with their hair rough and powdered with 

 chaff, some full of straws, and some covered 

 with cobwebs and dust, ' that anybody might 

 be frightened at the sight of them.' They 

 were black with dirt, ill-favored in counte- 

 nance, and misshapen in stature, and God 

 did not conceal his disgust. 'None,' he said, 

 ' can make a vessel of silver out of an earth- 

 en pitcher or goodly silk out of a goat's 

 fleece, or a bright sword of a cow's tail ; 

 neither will I, though I can, make a noble 

 gentleman out of a vile villain. You shall 

 all be plowmen iind tillers of the ground, 

 to keep oxen and hogs, to dig and delve, 

 and hedge and dike, and in this wise shall 

 ye live in endless servitude. Even the 

 townsmen shall laugh you to scorn ; yet some 

 of you shall be allowed to dwell in cities, 

 and shall be admitted to such occupations 



