193 



ALEMBIC. 



ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY. 



194 



Licensed victuallers, and keepers of beershops who sell ale to be 

 drunk on the premises, are liable to have soldiers billeted upon them. 

 Under the ' Metropolitan Police Act ' (2 & 3 Viet. c. 37), which under 

 certain conditions may be extended to within 15 miles of Charing Cross, 

 all public houses are to be shut on Sundays until 1 o'clock in the after- 

 noon, except for refreshment of travellers. Publicans supplying liquors 

 to persons under sixteen years of age incur penalties. 



The sale of beer and other liquors throughout Great Britain on 

 Sunday, Christmas-day, and Good Friday, or other day appointed for a 

 public fast or thanksgiving, is regulated by the 11 & 12 Viet. c. 49, and 

 the 18 & 19 Viet. c. 118. No person may open his house for the 

 sale of liquors before half-past 12 o'clock, or the termination of 

 morning sen-ice, or between 3 and 5 in the afternoon, or after 11 o'clock 

 or before 4 o'clock in the following morning, under the penalty of 51. 

 Constables may enter the house at any time, and offenders may be 

 summarily convicted. 



ALEMBIC, a chemical vessel used in distillation. Various forms of 

 it have been devised ; the simplest consists of a bod;/, cucurbit, or 

 matrons, which serves as a boiler ; a head or capital, with a pipe and a 

 receiver. 



Sometimes all these parts are made of glass, and the head and 

 receiver are usually so ; when the body is of this material, it is fitted 

 to the head by grinding ; but the apparatus, in this case, is extremely 

 expensive, and very liable to accident. When the body is made of 

 metal, the glass head is secured to it by almond or linseed meal lute. 



The fluid to be distilled having been put into the body, the head 

 being fitted to it, and the receiver adapted to its pipe, heat is applied 

 to the body either by a lamp or a sand-bath ; the vapour which rises 

 is condensed in the head, and, falling into a depressed channel, runs 

 through the pipe into the receiver, loosely fitted to it with a cork. 

 If the receiver be kept partly immersed in cold water, the condensation 

 will be more readily and economically effected. Sometimes the head is 

 perforated, and furnished with a stopper; by removing this, a supply 

 of the fluid to be distilled may be poured into the body, without 

 disturbing the luting by which the body and head are kept in close 

 contact. An alembic of this kind is not very useful for the general 

 purposes of distillation ; it can scarcely be applied to the preparation of 

 acids : and for distilling spirit or water, a retort or a still is much to 

 be preferred. An alembic of this form, the body of which is made of 

 silver, and the head and receiver of glass, is sometimes employed for 

 distilling the spirit from the alcoholic solutions of potash and soda, in 

 the process of purifying these alkalies. 



The most ancient alembics were made of metal, and generally of 

 tinned copper ; the annexed figures represent that proposed by Baume 

 in his ' Element* of Pharmacy,' with very slight alteration. It is corn- 



Fig. 1 



Fig. 4. 



posed of several parts : a, Fig. 1, represents the cucurbit, body, o , 



which is made of tinned copper ; b is a short pipe by which the boiler 

 is replenished with the fluid to be distilled, during the operation, and 

 without disturbing or unluting the apparatus. When in operation, the 

 pipe b is stopped with a cork. 



Fig. 2 is a section of the heail or rnpiinl, which fits into a, and is secured 

 by lute ; it i divided into two parts, which do not communicate with 



AUTS A.NI) SCI. DIV. VOL. I. 



each other ; c contains cold water, which, by cooling the vapour that 

 rises from the boiler a into d, causes it to condense into a fluid, which 

 runs down into a small gutter, and is by it conveyed through the pipe 

 e into a receiver ; / is a cock by which the water is let out from c when 

 it becomes hot by condensing the vapour. 



Fig. 3 represents a worm, or serpentine, g, into which is conveyed the 

 vapour that may escape condensation in d ; it is surrounded by cold 

 water in the vessel It, which, as it becomes hot, is let out near the top 

 of the vessel ,and a fresh supply of cold water introduced near the 

 bottom ; the condensed vapour is received at the end of the worm in 

 the receiver it 1 . The cock i serves to remove the whole of the water 

 from the vessel g. 



Fig. 4 represents a >catcr-bath, also made of tinned copper ; it fits into 

 the body a, and is heated by the medium of the boiling-water contained 

 in the space between it and a, instead of the fire directly applied. When 

 the water-bath is used, the head, Fig. 2, is fitted into it in the manner 

 already described with respect to the body a, Fig. 1. 



Fig. 5 shows the whole apparatus placed in the furnace, with the 

 worm attached to the pipe of the head. 



The alembic, in the form now described, is but little used ; the 

 addition of the worm surrounded with cold water has rendered it un- 

 necessary to employ any refrigeratory round the head ; and the apparatus 

 thus simplified is the common still, which will be described under tho 

 article DISTILLATION. 



ALEUROMETER. One of the novelties of 1849 was a contrivance 

 called an Aleurometer, invented by M. Bolaud, a Paris baker, for ascer- 

 taining the panifiable or bread-making qualities of wheaten flour. This 

 determination depends upon the expansion of the gluten contained in 

 a given quantity of flour when freed from its starch. A ball of gluten 

 being placed in a cylinder to which a piston is fitted, the apparatus is 

 exposed to a temperature of 150 ; and as the gluten dilates, its degree 

 of dilatation is marked by the piston-rod. The greater the dilatation, 

 the better is the flour fitted for making bread. 



ALEXANDRA, one of the group of small planets revolving between 

 Mars and Jupiter. [ASTEROIDS.] 



ALEXANDRIAN CODEX, a manuscript of the Old and New 

 Testament, in Greek, now preserved in the British Museum. It was 

 sent by Cyrillus Lucaris, patriarch, first of Alexandria, then of Con- 

 stantinople, to Charles I. ; was placed in the royal library in 1628 ; and 

 continued there until that collection was removed to the British 

 Museum in 1753. The history of the manuscript, before its transfer to 

 Charles I., is involved in much uncertainty ; and the real age and value 

 of it have been much controverted. These points have been minutely 

 discussed by Dr. Woide, formerly librarian of the British Museum, who 

 published a fac-simile of the New Testament, in his preface. He is a 

 staunch advocate of the excellence of the manuscript. A second 

 edition of the preface (' Notitia Codicis Alexandrini ') was published by 

 Spohn, who controverted many of Woide's opinions, showed that the 

 manuscript was by no means free from blunders of transcription, and 

 reduced both its age and authority to a much lower standard. 



The manuscript is contained in four volumes, of the shape and size of 

 large quarto, of which the New Testament fills the last. It is written 

 on vellum, in double columns, in uncial or capital letters, without 

 spaces between the words, accents, or marks of aspiration. The letters 

 are round and well formed. Some words are abbreviated, but they are 

 not very numerous. There is a variety both in the colour of the ink 

 and the form of the letters. The manuscript is on the whole in good 

 condition, but sometimes the ink has eaten through the parchment ; 

 the shape of the letters however can generally be traced ; sometimes 

 the ink itself has scaled off. 



The New Testament has been more fully described and more care- 

 fully collated than the Old ; from which however Grabe published his 

 splendid edition of the Old Testament^ Oxford, 1717-20. They are 

 uniform in appearance and execution, but the Old Testament seems to 

 be in rather better condition. It contains, besides all the canonical 

 and most of the apocryphal books found in our editions, the third and 

 fourth books of the Maccabees, the Epistle of Athanasius to Marcellinus, 

 prefixed to the Psalms, and fourteen hymns, the eleventh in honour of 

 the Virgin. Ecclesiasticus, the Song of the Three Children, Susannah, 

 and Bel and the Dragon, do not appear to have formed part of the 

 collection. The New Testament contains the genuine epistle of 

 Clement to the Corinthians, and part of the other which has been 

 attributed to him. This is the only known manuscript in which the 

 genuine epistle exists. A fac-simile of the Old Testament has been 

 published by the Rev. H. Baber, of the British Museum. 



ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY, a collection of books, formed by 

 Ptolemacus, the first king of Egypt, and probably the largest which was 

 made before the invention of printing. It is said to have been founded 

 about B.C. 284, in consequence of the suggestions of Demetrius Phald- 

 reus, who had seen the public libraries at Athens. Demetrius was 

 appointed superintendent of the new establishment, and busied himself 

 diligently in collecting the literature of all nations, Jewish, Chaldee, 

 Persian, Ethiopian, Egyptian, &c., as well as Greek and Latin. Euse- 

 bius says, that at the death of Ptolemscus Philadelphus there were 

 100,000 volumes in the library. It was situated in the quarter of 

 Alexandria called Brucheion. Philadelphus purchased the library of 

 Aristotle, and it was increased by his successors. Almost all the 

 Ptolemies were patrons of learning ; and at last the Alexandrian 



