honey diluted in nearly an equal weight of water. When this liquor has not fermented, it is called simple hydromel; and when it has undergone the spirituous fermentation, it is called the vinous hydromel or mead.

Honey, like all saccharine substances, vegetable or animal, is susceptible of fermentation in general, and particularly of the spirituous fermentation. To induce this fermentation, nothing is necessary but to dilute it sufficiently in water, and to leave this liquor exposed to a convenient degree of heat. To make good vinous hydromel or mead, the whitest, purest, and best-tasted honey must be chosen; and this must be put into a kettle with more than its weight of water: a part of this liquor must be evaporated by boiling, and the liquor scummed, till its consistence is such that a fresh egg shall be supported upon its surface without sinking more than half its thickness into the liquor; then the liquor is to be strained and poured through a funnel into a barrel: this barrel, which ought to be nearly full, must be exposed to a heat as equable as is possible, from 20 to 27 or 28 degrees of Mr Reaumur's thermometer, taking care that the bung-hole be slightly covered, but not closed. The phenomena of the spirituous fermentation will appear in this liquor, and will subsist during two or three months, according to the degree of heat; after which they will diminish and cease. During this fermentation, the barrel must be filled up occasionally with more of the same kind of liquor of honey, some of which ought to be kept apart on purpose to replace the liquor which flows out of the barrel in froth. When the fermentation ceases, and the liquor has become very vinous, the barrel is then to be put in a cellar and well closed. A year afterwards the mead will be fit to be put into bottles.

The vinous hydromel or mead is an agreeable kind of wine: nevertheless it retains long a taste of honey, which is unpleasing to some persons; but this taste it is said to lose entirely by being kept a very long time.

The spirituous fermentation of honey, as also that of sugar, and of the most of vinous liquors, when it is very saccharine, is generally more difficultly effected, requires more heat, and continues longer than that of ordinary wines made from the juice of grapes; and these vinous liquors always preserve a saccharine taste, which which shows that a part only of them is become spiri- tuous.