Dec. 5, 1884.] 



• KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



471 



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IS TEA INJURIOUS? 



[1524] — In reply to your correspondents, Messrs. Williams, 

 Gaubert, and Bell, I conclude the above-named gentlemen have 

 had sufficient time to eke out the essence of their subject, but allow 

 me to state the following fact: — viz., that my grandmother lived 

 till the age of eighty-four years, and her sister till ninety-nine years 

 and ten months, each had tea to three meals each day, and 

 both retained all their mental faculties till their decease ; and, for 

 my own part, I prefer tea. I also notice a very large proportion 

 of people in far advanced age, and they themselves state that it is 

 preferable to coffee or cocoa, as both the latter cause frequent 

 biliousness. If tea does not prevent longevity, I cannot conceive 

 how it can cause any mental incapacity whatever. 



Joe E. Liddle. 



DOCTORING WINE. 



[1525] — In the last number of Knowledge, page 450, " Gypsum " 

 questions, on theoretical grounds, my inferences concerning his 

 misdoings in the manufacture of wine. My conclusions concerning 

 the substitution of tartrate by sulphates are not theoretical, but are 

 proved by the analysis of many eminent chemists. All are unani- 

 mous on this point. " Gypsum " says that " if this were the result 

 of mixing sulphate of lime and bitartrate of potash in wine, the 

 same result would ensue if bitartrate of potash were added to hard 

 water." An action corresponding to that which I described does 

 take place. Everybody who has used cream of tartar as a beverage, 

 or otherwise tried to dissolve it in hard water, knows that there 

 remains an insoluble residuum from which no more flavour of 

 cream of tartar can be extracted by adding more water. This pre- 

 cipitate is a compound of the tartaric acid with the lime 

 in the water; the potash of the cream of tartar having gone 

 over to the acid with which the lime was originally combined. 

 Cream of tartar dissolves in about 180 parts of cold distilled water, 

 very much less as the water is warmed. 



I never attributed the mischievous action of plastered or other- 

 wise cooked sherry to " a trace of gypsum," being well aware that 

 the wine cannot possibly dissolve one-tenth of the quantity of 

 gypsum required to produce the precipitate I obtained from the 

 samples as described, and which any body else may obtain by fol- 

 lowiag my instructions concerning the use of chloride of barium. 

 There was free sulphuric acid in some, alum in others, sulphates in 

 all, substituting the natural organic acids, and organic salts of 

 simply fermented grape juice. The evil results of such substitu- 

 tion, either in food or drink, are too well known to demand any 

 further discussion. 



I am not able to fully reply to the query of Mr. Scargill which 

 follows the above, not being able to understand how gypsum can 

 be made " to dissolve freely in water." It requires 400 parts of 

 water for its solution. As stated above, this quantity, either in 

 beer or water, can have but a trivial effect. When I first visited 

 Paris in 1842, the water commonly used was saturated with sul- 

 phate of hme. The weather was hot ; I drank much of it, and 

 suffered some inconvenience. An English resident-physician then 

 told me that sulphate of lime has the same aperient action as 

 its chemical cousin, sulphate of magnesia (Epsom salts). In 

 order, however, to take a dose of half an ounce, ten pints of 

 saturated water, or a corresponding quantity of saturated wine or 

 beer, must be taken. W. Mattieu Williams. 



"STATISTICS OF BARATARIA." 



[1526] — Some time ago, the Editor of Knowledge remarked 

 that a man's descendants, after some generations, had but a frac- 

 tion of his blood in them ; and this is repeated and amplified by Mr. 

 Grant Allen on p. 416, Knowledge, vol. vi. It occurred to me that 

 though this is mathematicaUy true, yet there are reasons for think- 

 ing it is not phj'sically so. It does not follow that because in the 

 fourth generation a negi-o's posterity are "white by law," all other 

 peculiarities are lost in other cases — c.ij., there may be different 

 results from cross-breeding and from in-and-in breeding. And in 

 his last paragraph Mr. Allen seems rather to modify what he says 

 in the preceding one. "The one certainty upon which the ethno- 

 logist can repose is physical peculiai'ities. These . . . repeat 

 themselves." 



How can this be reconciled with (supra) : " Nobody on earth 

 could possibly detect in the fifth remove the very slightest tinge of 

 negro ancestry " ? Why does not an occasional negro turn up in 

 such families, like the lips of the Polish princess in the Hapsburg 

 line ? 



My belief is that the mothers do little to modify races, but that 

 general physical arrangement follows the patronymic. The Due 

 de Nemours is the picture of his ancestor, Henri IV. It would be 

 of some value if we could ascertain whether any of his brothers re- 

 semble in an equal degree any of their ancestresses. 



My attention was fixed on this twenty years ago by a striking 

 circumstance. I knew the names of all my foremothers married to 

 paternal ancestors, up to the begiuning of the fourteenth century. 

 My mother was pure English ; my father's mother, pure Welsh ; his 

 father's, Anglo-Irish ; his father's, again, pure English. All before 

 that were pure Lowland Scotch ; but my ancestor of the thirteenth 

 century is said to have been Celtic, and for this reason we are 

 reckoned among the Highland clans, though our cradle lies south 

 of the Highland line. In 1863 I made the acquaintance of another 

 branch of our name, absolutely pure Scotch. To my surprise, I 

 found them repeat, not only in general likeness, but in small 

 details, my own near relations. I saw also a fine portrait of my 

 great-grandfather's grand-aunt (of my own name), which was, line 

 for line, that of my own sister, save the forehead. But the most 

 curious thing was that when I entered the room at a meeting of 

 the R.S.A.S., a Fellow remarked to another " What an extra- 

 ordinary likeness that gentleman bears to the of ' 



(naming the elder branch of my family, now extinct, whom he had 

 known in youth). How could a mongrel like me be instantly 

 spotted as a scion of a pure Scotch race, unless it be that — at all 

 events, within certain limits of race — the original paternal blood is 

 never washed out ; or, at least, not in two hundred years, for it is 

 just that since I had a Scotch ancestress. 



As I get old I remind myself, more than of any one else, of my 

 mother-in-law, who was absolutely pure Highland, and not the 

 faintest relation. How can this be, unless I reproduce my last pure 

 Celtic ancestor, who was born certainly net later than 1250 ? These 

 facts are all the more strange when I add that I am also very 

 like my mother's father. 



From the above date I would also draw a political moral. The 

 sovereign of a realm, however limited his powers, must always 

 exercise a very large influence over his people. Now the Prince of 

 Wales will, of course, to a great extent " take after " his august 

 mother. But the f'lture kings will repeat, not the line of Guelph, 

 with which we shall be done for ever, but those obscure Dukes of 

 Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, from whom spring the new line of double- 

 German kings. 



If we wish to forecast what sort of Royal family we shall have 

 in ages to come, it is these sovereigns whose biographies we should 

 study. Yet there has been, I think, only one book published about 

 them ; and it does not seem much sought after. Halltards. 



"EDWIN DROOD" (DICKENS'S STORY LEFT HALF 

 TOLD). 



[1527] — I think you have recently expressed yourself as of one 

 mind with Mr. Foster on the subject of " Edwin Drood." Will 

 you, then, allow me to be " H. E.'s" ally in the argument. I may 

 be able to notice one or two things in defence of his theory. 



Mr. Foster makes a great point of the sight which so horrified 

 Jasper when he was attacking Edwin on " the great tower." May 

 not this horrifying sight have been merely the ugly result of the 

 sudden and violent strangulation which Edwin was undergoing? 

 Jasper would have good cause to say he had never seen that before, 

 whatever else he might have seen "in his mind's eye" when 

 planning the murder. 



Mr. Foster suggests that, when Edwin was flung into Mrs. Sapsea's 

 tomb, " the strong silk shawl with which Jasper had intended to 

 throttle him " was drawn over his face. According to this, Edwia 



