256 CHYMISTRY APPLIED TO AGRICULTURE^ 



fitted a tube communicating with the receiver ; he observes, 

 that by this means there can be obtained at pleasure all the 

 degrees of rectification, since the aqueous particles are con- 

 densed in the lower caps, whilst the spirituous parts rise to 

 the upper one. These methods differ very little from those 

 which, according to Jerome Rubeus, were in use among the 

 ancients. 



Nicholas Lefebvre, who lived towards the middle of the 

 seventeenth century, published, in 1651, a description of the 

 apparatus with which he obtained, at a single operation, the 

 purest alcohol. 



This apparatus is composed of a long funnel formed of 

 several pieces joined together in zigzags; one end of it is 

 fitted to the boiler, and the other to the cap ; the beak of the 

 cap transmits the vapor into a pipe, which passes through a 

 cask filled with cold water ; in this pipe the vapor is con- 

 densed and flows from it into a receiver. 



Dr. Arnaud, of Lyons, in bis Introduction a la Chimie 

 ou a la vraie PhifsiquCy imprime en 1655, chez CL Prost, 

 d Li/on, has given us some excellent instructions iii re- 

 gard to the construction of furnaces, the composition of 

 ffues, the mode of regulating the fire, calcination, and 

 distillation, which he calls a moist sublimation. He advises 

 the use of shallow boilers as facilitating evaporation ; he 

 speaks of the conversion of distilled spirit into the spirit 

 of wine, by repeated distillations in a water bath, such as 

 is now employed for distilling those substances, the spirit- 

 uous portions of which are vaporized at a degree of heat 

 less than that of. boiling water. He also speaks of the vapor 

 or dew bath. 



John Rodolph Glauber, in his treatise entitled Dc- 

 scriptio Artis Distillatorm novce, printed in Amsterdam 

 in 1658, by John Janson, makes known to us some pro- 

 ceedings, in which we find the germ of most of the opera- 

 tions, which are now carried to such perfection amongst 

 us. One of them consists in transmitting the vapor 

 which escapes by distillation into a vase surrounded with 

 cold water : the vapor which is not condensed in this first 

 vessel, passes through a bent tube into a second, from that 

 to a third, and so on till the whole is perfectly condensed. 

 It is evident, that by means of such an apparatus, spirits 

 of wine of different degrees of rectification may be ob- 

 tained, according as the condensation takes place in the 

 first, second, or third of the vases, plunged in cold watef. 



