’ 
456] 
embroidered star of several colours ; 
I saw not the like any where, no not 
at Dr. Uvedale’s, though he has 
the same plant. He raises many 
striped ‘hoilies by inoculation, 
though Captain Foster rafts them 
as we do apple-trees, He is very 
curious in propagating greens, but 
is dear with them, He ‘has a 
folio paper book, in which he has 
pasted the leaves and flowers of al- 
most all manner of plants, which 
make a pretty show, and are more 
instruéiive than any cuts in Her- 
balsve | 
28. Clements, at Mile-end, has 
no bigger a garden than Darby, but 
has more greens, yet not of such 
curious sorts. He keeps them in 
a green-house made with a light 
charge. He has vines in many places, 
abou’ old trees, which they wind 
about. He made wine this year 
of his white muscadine, and white 
fro tinac, better, I thought, than 
any French white wine. He keeps 
a shop of seeds in plants, in pots 
next the street.) © °° * 
. Fan. 26; 1691. J. Grnson, 
Sketch of the History of Sugar, in the 
early Times, and through the Mid- 
ale Ages. By W. Falcouer, M.D. 
F,R.S, From the Memoirs of the 
Manchester Transactions. 
THE use of sugar is probably of 
high, though not remote antiquity, 
as no mention of it is made, as far 
as I can find, in the sacred writings 
ANNUAL REGISTER, 1796. 
of the old Testament*. The con. 
quests of Ajexander seem to have 
opened the discovery of it to the 
western parts of the world. 
Nearchus +, his admiral, found 
the sugar cane in the East-Indies, 
as appears from his account of it, 
quoted by Strabo. It is not how- 
ever, clear, from what he says, 
that any art was used in bringing 
the juice of the cane to, the con- 
sistence' of suvate bus ge 
Theophrastus, who lived not 
long after, seems to have had some 
knowledge of sugar, at least of thé 
cane from which it is prepared. 
In enumerating the different kinds 
of honey, he mentions one that ig 
found in reeds, which must have 
been meant of some of those kinds 
which produce sugar. ak 
Eratosthenes, also, is quoted by 
Strabo, as speaking of the roots of 
large reeds found in India, which 
were sweet to the taste both when 
raw and when boiled. 
The next author, in point of 
time, that makes menticn ‘of sugar 
is Varro, who, in a fragment quoted 
by Jsidorus, evidently alludes to 
this substance. He describes it ag 
a fluid, pressed out from reeds of 
a largé size, which was sweeter 
than honey. © Pent 
Dioscorides, speaking of the dif- 
ferent kinds of honey, says, that 
*¢ there is a kind of it in a con. 
crete state, called Saceharon, which 
is found in reeds in‘ India and 
Arabia Felix. This, he adds, has 
the appearance of salt; and like 
* Since writing the above, I have observed that the sweet cane is mentioned in 
two places in Scripture, and in both as an -article of merchandize. It does~ not 
seem to have been the produce of Judea, asitis spoken of as coming from a far 
country. Isaiah, chap. xl v 
24, Jeremiah, chap. vi.v, 20.—It is worthy 
of remark, that the vord Sachar siguifies, in the Hebrew language, inebriation, 
which makes it probable, that the juice of thé cane had been early used for making 
. a 
some fermented liquor. 
¢ Ante Christ, Ann, 323, 
that 
ae 
