On the Distillation of Spirits from Grain. 279 
different places, the greatest depth by far, after making every 
proper allowance for situation, being near the western coast. 
This wet period having been attended with a mean tempera- 
ture of 4°61 higher than the mean of the same months (Sep- 
tember, October, November and December) for the last seven 
years, it has therefore forwarded vegetation in a surprising man- 
ner. In the variable climate of Britain, scarcely a year passes 
but is productive of some anomalies in the state of the weather 
in one or other of the seasons; but the present year has pro- 
duced many, as in the extremes of pressure, retrograde tempe- 
rature, prevailing high winds, numerous atmospheric and me- 
teoric phenomena, and rain exceeding in duration and quantity 
that of any former annual pericd. 
SSS SSS SSS SSS SSS SS 
LXII. On the Distillation of Spirits from Grain, and on the 
Water most conducive to Fermentation. By M. Dusrun- 
FauT of Lille*. 
if is an opinion generally admitted in theory and in practice, 
that rain or river water is the most proper to produce a good 
fermentation. ‘Those who have broached a different theory have 
contended that all sorts of waters, provided they are potable, are 
fit for the purpose. The first of these two opinions, although 
perhaps more unreasonable than the other, yet being founded 
on the greater purity which rain and river waters seem to the 
eye to possess, has prevailed for a long time unquestioned in 
many distilleries, where well or spring water would not be used 
without scruple. 
This predilection, which I shall immediately show to be erro- 
neous, has its origin in a false application of chemical theory. 
Indeed, when the delicate operations of analysis, and when the 
scrupulous manipulations of colours, require a water quite pure, 
and quite disengaged from every calcareous salt foreign to the 
results required, this may be readily conceived; but to extend 
this precaution to other operations of art, upon a simple pro- 
bability and without examination, would be to fall into a similar 
error of prejudice to that which we have just been condemning. 
The distillation of spirits from grain, which appears to have 
reached its greatest perfection in Germany, and particularly in 
Holland, is become now an important auxiliary to our agriculture, 
especially in the departments on the north and east sides of 
France. 
French Flanders, which inherits in this branch of industry the 
long practice of the Dutch, possesses distilleries where they ¢x- 
* From Annales de Chimie for January 1822. 
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