102 TIMEHRI. 
If it is sometimes possible to discover in the vagueness of 
the descriptions of the Greek Alchemists something 
precise, there is as far as I know nothing which is 
applicable to the distillation of wine. The principle of — 
fractional distillation and the variety of its produéts are 
just touched upon in one or two passages, but these 
passages appear to relate to the treatment of alkaline 
polysulphurets, or of sulphurated organic matters having 
nothing in common with alcohol. 
I have not met in the Arabic treatises on medicine and 
materia medica printed in French, or in the Arabic MSS. 
or GEBER and other alchemist writers which are before me 
and which I am preparing for publication, any precise 
passage relating either to alcohol or to any definite dis- 
tilled liquor. I have already expressed my views with 
respect to the text of RASES, sometimes erroneously 
quoted, for this refers only to fermented liquor, without 
any allusion to its distillation or the extraétion of — 
alcohol. Inthe same way mention is made of ALBU- 
CASIM but this author having described certain distilling 
apparatus reproduced from the dibicos and tribicos of the 
Greeks merely adds, “In this way he who wants distilled 
wine can distil it.” And he also gives dire€tions for dis- 
tilling, by these means, rose water and vinegar. He 
only speaks of a distillation in bulk. Nevertheless it is 
certain that the idea of preparing an aromatic distilled 
water such as rose water, much used in the East, appears 
here for the first time, but there is nothing applicable to 
an essence properly so called, nor to alcohol in particular, 
In these works I repeat the distillation of wine is only 
treated of without any distinétion between the successive 
produéts of fra¢tional distillation. However it was 
