chap, v.] CULTIVATION OF CORN. 99 



The must is carried away in goat-skins and transferred to 

 casks, there to undergo fermentation. When the violence 

 of the fermentation is over, that is >to say, in ten or twelve 

 days, it is an approved practice to throw into each cask two or 

 three pounds of powdered gypsum, stirring it up in the wines 

 daily for the next ten days. The gypsum is ^aid to take up 

 the watery particles of the wine, and prevent its becoming 

 ropy : the fermentation then gradually subsides, and at the 

 end of six or eight weeks the lees are racked off, and a gallon 

 or two of brandy added to each pipe. 



Madeira wines are considerably advanced and matured by 

 heat. It is a common thing to give these wines a passage to 

 the East or West Indies, before they are landed in England. 



The heat of a ship's hold in India, or of a sugar-laden 

 ship in Jamaica, sometimes exceeds 110° of Fahrenheit. By 

 some, the wine is ripened at home in stoves ; the abuse of 

 which, by giving a false appearance of age to inferior wines, 

 has at various times been prejudicial to the trade of the island. 



The countrymen calculate that one-tenth of the produce of 

 a vineyard is destroyed by flies, lizards, and rats. 



CULTIVATION OF CORN. 



Wheat is cultivated as high as Santo Antonio da Serra, 

 about 2400 feet above the sea. The hard transparent kinds 

 are preferred by the natives, from an opinion that the flour 

 rises better in baking ; no very white flour, however, is pre- 

 pared from such wheat. The sample appears inferior to many 

 from England ; but the native com bears a higher price in 

 Madeira, partly perhaps from being cleaner than that which 

 comes on ship-board from Europe and America. The wheat of 

 the highlands is different from that grown nearer the sea-shore ; 

 what is produced on the former ground resembles Odessa 



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