1892 Drinks of the world

DRINKS.

54

less interesting. Of the chemical composition of wine, and of its uses in health and disease; on which so many- books from the days of old have been already written, we shall, in accordance with our preface, say nothing at all, or very little. Every person who feels himself or herself int-erested in this latter matter may learn as much as he or she will from the pages of the Lancet, while Professor Mulder has probably written enough about the former to satisfy the most anxious student. The origin of most things is obscure. Treatises have been composed about that of wine. We have no intention of reproducing aught of them in the present work. Let us be content to suppose that wine had its The date of its introduction into Greece is no more known than that of its introduction into Italy. A traditional credit is due to Saturn, to Noah, and to Bacchus as early wine manufacturers. Certainly in Palestine they had the advantage of fine grapes. On the well-known historic occasion of Moses sending men to search the land of Canaan, in the time of the first ripe fruit, we learn that when they came unto the brook of Eshcol, they cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes and " bare it be- tween two upon a staff." It has been perhaps some- what hastily assumed that the fruit was therefore necessarily of a large size. There may have been other reasons for this proceeding than an enormity of weight. But if, as is generally imagined, these grapes were unusually fine and large, wine makers would be clearly benefited thereby. In support of this interpretation of origin, again like most things, somewhere at some time in the East.