CENTURY IX. 8S 



honey, there were brought in use a sugar-mead, (for so 

 we may call it) though without any mixture at all of 

 honey ; and to brew it, and keep it stale, as they use 

 mead : for certainly, though it would not be so abster 

 sive, and opening, and solutive a drink as mead : yet it 

 will be more grateful to the stomach, and more leni 

 tive, and fit to be used in sharp diseases : for we see 

 that the use of sugar in beer and ale hath good effects 

 in such cases. 1 



Experiment solitary touching the finer sort of base 

 metals. 



849. It is reported by the ancients, that there was a 

 kind of steel in some places, which would polish almost 

 as white and bright as silver. 2 And that there was 

 in India a kind of brass which (being polished) could 

 scarce be discerned from gold. This was in the nat 

 ural ure : 3 but I am doubtful, whether men have suf 

 ficiently refined metals, which we count base ; as 

 whether iron, brass, or tin be refined to the height ? 

 But when they come to such a fineness as serveth the 

 ordinary use, they try no further. 



Experiment solitary touching cements and quarries. 



850. There have been found certain cements under 

 earth that are very soft ; and yet, taken forth into the 

 sun, harden as hard as marble : there are also ordinary 

 quarries in Somersetshire, which in the quarry cut soft 



1 The sugar-wine which Bacon here recommends is well known in Span 

 ish America, where it is called guarapo. With respect to the wine made 

 of honey, see Pliny, xiv. 20. 



2 Arist. Mirab. 48. and 49. But the writer speaks of iron, not of 

 Bteel. 



8 So in the original. J. S. 



