rather than their taste or other properties, which has rendered them such favourites. Could people be contented with the moderate use of them, they might be accounted a valuable addition to diet; but, abused as they are, it might almost be wished that pure water were the only drink known to mankind. The mischief has been made much greater by the discovery of the art, unknown to the ancients, of extracting the strongest part of these liquors separate, by means of distillation. The product is then called a spirituous liquor, or ardent spirit, and is, in reality, a kind of liquid fire, which destroys the reason, inflames the passions to a kind of madness, and consumes the vitals. Certainly, the preparation of this cannot properly be called one of the arts of life.

A much more innocent product of fermentation is vinegar; an acid into which any fermented liquor may be turned, by pushing the process of fermentation a degree further. In the wine-growing countries vinegar is obtained from wine which has turned sour, and other waste products of the vineyard. With us it is sometimes made at home of sugar and

water, or green gooseberries; but it is always manufactured in the large way of malt, previously made into a kind of ale without hops. It is cooling and refreshing, and is an agreeable condiment to salted meats and other articles of food, besides making a pickle in which both fish and vegetables are preserved for use.

All sweet things are apt to pall the appetite and to turn sour on the stomach, when they cause great disturbance within. They are particularly hurtful when taken in quantity upon a full meal, which is too often the case at desserts after dinner. Excess in them is the usual intemperance of young people, to whose palates they are particularly agreeable. Thus every pleasure offered by kind Nature is turned to a bane, if we have not sufficient self-command to use it with moderation. With this reflection I take my leave of you for the present.

LETTER IV.

ON VEGETABLE ARTICLES OF FOOD CONTINUED.

MY DEAR BOY,-I now proceed to another class of nutritious vegetable products, the oleaginous, or oily. A great number of seeds abound in a mild, tasteless oil, which though unfit for food by itself, adds greatly to the nourishing quality of the substance with which it is mixed. The kernels of several fruits contain this oil, and nuts of all kinds. The presence of oil may be known by mashing the substance and then pouring on water, which will become milky if oil makes a part of it. Almond milk, or emulsion, is made in this manner. The cocoa nut, the largest of the kind, which grows on a tall tree of the palm kind in the tropical countries, contains a natural milk, which is a mixture of its oily with its sweet and watery juices. From many oily vegetables, the oil

may be procured separate, by means of simple pressure. It is extracted thus from the fruit of the olive, which is the principal source of eating oil in Europe, and is much cultivated in its southern countries on that account, as well as for burning in lamps, and various other purposes. The tree is also grown in many parts of western Asia. "Wine and oil" are joined together, in the Jewish Scriptures, like "milk and honey." One of its uses was for anointing a practice widely prevalent in the warmer countries of the globe.

The seeds of flax, hemp, rape, mustard, poppy, and several other plants, yield oils by pressure, of a similar kind, but less palatable; whence they are used rather for other purposes than for food. Chocolate, which is so great an article of diet in Spain and South America, and is a luxury with us, is a kind of solid oil or butter, procured from the nuts of the cacao. A lighter and more wholesome beverage is procured from these nuts by simply bruising and boiling them in water. Palm-oil, procured from the seeds of a plant growing in the hottest parts of Africa, is used by the natives for the purposes of butter. Of

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late years we have imported it in vast quantities to be employed in candle-making. It is to be observed of the oily vegetables, particularly those of the nut kind, that they are in general difficult of digestion, and liable to do much harm, if eaten in large quantities.

Another tribe of vegetables are nutritious by virtue of the mucilaginous or slimy juices which they contain. You are probably acquainted with plum-tree and cherry-tree gum; and also with gum-arabic. These are pure mucilage, exuding from the tree, and hardened by the sun and air. It is seldom found in this separate state; but a portion of mucilaginous matter has been found in every vegetable which has been examined. Those juices which become sweet, oily, or farinaceous, in a mature state, are mucilaginous in an earlier period. Some plants, however, are particularly remarkable for their slimy nature, which they keep without changing. Such are mallow, marshmallow, comfrey-root, linseed, the seed of quinces, and many others. These give out their mucilage to water on boiling, and render it thick. They are articles of medicine rather than food; but it is