1 50 Transactions. 



althougli that name is more correctly applied to a spirit distilled 

 Irom the palm, known also as toddy. Quass, or rye beer, made 

 from common rye (Secale cercale) is a favourite drink in Russia. 

 In Sikkim a kind of beer, which is in common use among the 

 natives, is made from Eleusine coracana, a species of millet. 

 The Tartars also prepare a kind of beer from another plant of 

 the same genus, styling the beverage bouza, and the Abyssinians 

 make a similar drink under the same name from Poa Abyssinica. 



Beer is of ancient origin among the noi'thern nations. Mum, 

 a word which still occurs even in modern excise acts, is the name 

 of a species of that liquor still made in Germany. It was a 

 favourite Anglo-Saxon drink, and probably only partially 

 fermented, like that used in Orkney, which is prepared in open 

 vessels. A beer, also most likely of this class, was, according to 

 Tacitus, the ciiief beverage of tlie ancient Germans. When the 

 Ten Thousand in their famous retreat were quartered in the 

 mountain villages of Armenia, they found, Xenophon tells us, 

 " beer in jars, in which the malt floated level with the brims of 

 the vessels, and with it reeds, some large and others small, with- 

 out joints. These, when anyone was dry, he was to take into his 

 mouth and suck. The liquor was very strong, when unmixed 

 with water, and exceedingly pleasant to those who were used to 

 it." 



The practice of distillation is probably less ancient than that 

 of fermentation ; but the Arabians, from a very early period, 

 and, later, Greeks and Romans, prepared aromatic water by 

 this process. The ancient Egyptians, near neighbours of the 

 Arabians, and skilled in all arts, prepared a liquor upon which a 

 Roman Emperor, the philosophic Julian, wrote an epigram,* and 

 which, from the description, must have been some kind of corn 

 spirit. 



* This epigram of Julian, probably written when he was Cassar in Gaul, 

 is found the Anthologia Palatina, vol. ix., 3t>S. It was given by 

 Erasmus in his " Adagia," with a very poor Latin translation. As it has 

 not been hitherto lendered into English, I here append a translation : — 

 "To wine made irom liatley. Dionysus, who art thou and whence ? for 

 I swear by the real Bacchus I do not recognise thee. The son of Zeus 

 alone I know. He is redolent of nectar thou of porridge. Verily, the Celts 

 have made thee from cars of corn, tlirough lack ot grapes. Therefore we 

 ought to call thco Demetrius, not Dionj'sus, Purogenes (wheat-born), and 

 Bromus (a kind of oats), not liromius." Evidently Julian was not a bad , 

 punster. To understand the puns it is necessity to remember that 

 Bacchus or Dionysus, the god of wine, was called PCirogeues (fire-born), 

 and that he is often called Bromius (noisy). Demetrius means belonging toi 

 Demettr, the Greek name for (/cres. — Editor. 



