256 pltnt's natural history. [Book XIV. 



husks of the grapes are employed in dressing leather. The 

 grapes, too, a little after the blossom has gone off, are sin- 

 gularly efficacious as a specific for cooling the feverish heat of 

 the body in certain maladies, being, it is said, of a nature re- 

 markable for extreme coldness. A portion of these grapes 

 wither away, in consequence of the heat, before the rest, 

 which are thence called solstitial 13 grapes; indeed, the whole 

 of them never attain maturity ; if one of these grapes, m 

 an unripe state, is given to a barn-door fowl to eat, it is pro- 

 ductive of a dislike to grapes for the future. 14 



CHAP. 19. SIXTY-SIX VARIETIES OF ARTIFICIAL WINE. 



The first of the artificial wines has wine for its basis; it is 

 called " adynamon," 15 and is made in the following manner. 

 Twenty sextarii of white must are boiled down with half that 

 quantity of water, until the amount of the water is lost _ by 

 evaporation. Some persons mix with the must ten sextarii of 

 sea- water and an equal quantity of rain-water, and leave the 

 whole to evaporate in the sun for forty days. This beverage 

 is given to invalids to whom it is apprehended that wine may 

 prove injurious. 



The next kind of artificial wine is that made of the ripo 

 grain of millet ; 16 a pound and a quarter of it with the straw 

 is steeped in two congii of must, and the mixture is poured on* 

 at the end of six months. We have already stated 17 how 

 various kinds of wine are made from the tree, the shrub, and 

 the herb, respectively known as the lotus. 



From fruit, too, the following wines are made, to the list of 

 which we shall only add some necessary explanations : — First 

 of all, we find the fruit of the palm 18 employed for this pur- 



13 " Solstitiales." Because they withstand the heat of the solstice. Mar- 

 cellus Empiricus calls them " caniculati," because they bear the heat of the 

 Dog-star. 



u Fee remarks that this assertion is quite erroneous. 



15 From the Greek, meaning " without strength." The mixture, Fee 

 remarks, would appear to be neither potable nor wholesome. 



16 See B. xviii. c. 24. A kind of beer might be made with it, Fee says ; 

 but this mixture must have been very unpalatable. 



" See B. xiii. c. 32. 



18 A vinous drink maybe made in the manner here stated ; but the palm- 

 wine of the peoples of Asia and Africa is only made of the fermented sap 

 of the tree. See B. xiii. c. 9. 



