a vessel proper to contain liquors, made of leather, glass, or stone. There are bottles of boiled leather which are made and sold by the cask-makers. Those amongst the ancient Hebrews were generally made of goat-skin, with the hair on the inside, well pitched and sewed together; the mouth of the bottle was through the animal's paw that furnished the matter of it.

There are now in use bottles of fine glass, which are commonly covered with oifer; and others of thick glass, which are not covered. Formerly all these bottles made in France held exactly a pint Paris measure, (about a quart of English wine measure); but since the tavern-keepers sell most of their wine in such bottles, notwithstanding an ordinance to the contrary, so that one would think the glass-makers had entered into an agreement with them not to make any bottles that hold the full measure, there are none but hold less, and some considerably so.

Dr Percival cautions against the practice of cleaning of wine-bottles with leaden shot. It frequently happens (he thinks), through inattention, that some of the little pellets are left behind; and when wine or beer is again poured into the bottles, this mineral poison will slowly dissolve, and impregnate those venous liquors with its deleterious qualities. The sweetness which is sometimes perceived in red port wine, may arise from this cause, when such an adulteration is neither designed nor suspected.