172 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



or wine-jars, disinterred in such numbers at Pompeii, 

 Nola, Cannse, and other ancient places in Italy, the 

 mouths are generally from five to ten inches in 

 diameter. The average height of these vessels may 

 be about four feet, and the diametef, at the thickest 

 part, eighteen inches. Like our modern bottles they 

 rarely vary in shape. 



According to the accurate author last quoted, 

 stoppers made simply of cork were not introduced 

 until some time after the invention of glass bottles, of 

 which there is no mention made before the fifteenth 

 century. Ruellius* and Aldrovandif, two authors 

 who wrote in the sixteenth century, describe the pur- 

 poses to which cork was at that time put, and they 

 are both equally silent concerning that use to which 

 it is now most extensively applied. We learn from 

 Neumann that corks were not used by the apothe- 

 caries for securing the contents of their phials until 

 the latter end of the seventeenth century. Before 

 that period they employed waxen stoppers, which 

 were not only much more expensive but required 

 much trouble to render them efficient. 



In the present day cork-stoppers are of universal 

 adoption in Europe, and indeed throughout the civil- 

 ized world, while the invention of modern ingenuity 

 has introduced improvements to obtain these stoppers 

 in the greatest possible perfection. In Italy, however, 

 where many ancient practices still linger in defiance 

 of modern improvement, the people often preserve 

 their wine by pouring a little oil into the mouth of the 

 bottle, and then tying up the mouth with oil-skin. 

 This is always done with the Florentine wine, known 

 under the name of Aleatico. The Neapolitans also 

 practise the same with most of their wines, which are 

 kept in very large glass vessels with wide mouths, 

 called perretti. Sometimes, instead of tying up the 

 * De Natura Stirpium, p. 256. 

 f Dendrologia, p. 194. 



