the wine trade. The coopers know very well the use of skimmed milk, which makes an innocent and efficacious forcing for the fining down of all white wines, arracks, and small spirits; but is by no means to be used for red wines, because it discharges their colour. Thus, if a few quarts of well skimmed milk be put into a hogshead of red wine, it will soon precipitate the greater part of the colour, and leave the whole nearly white; and this is of known use in the turning of red wines, when pricked, into white; in which a small degree of acidity is not so much perceived.

Milk is, from this quality of discharging colour from wines, of use also to the wine coopers, for the whitening of wines that have acquired a brown colour from the cask, or from having been hastily boiled before fermenting; for the addition of a little skimmed milk, in these cases, precipitates the brown colour, and leaves the wines almost limpid, or of what they call a water whiteness, which is much coveted abroad in wines as well as in brandies.

Milk of Lime; Milk of Sulphur. The name of milk is given to substances very different from milk properly so called, and which resemble milk only in colour. Such is water in which quicklime has been flaked, which acquires a whiteness from the small particles of the lime being suspended in it, and has hence been called the milk of lime. Such also is the solution of liver of sulphur, when an acid is mixed with it, by which white particles of sulphur are made to float in the liquor.

Milk of Vegetables. For the same reason that milk of animals may be considered as a true animal emulsion, the emulsive liquors of vegetables may be called vegetable milks. Accordingly emulsions made with almonds are commonly called milk of almonds. But besides this vegetable milk, which is in some measure artificial, many plants and trees contain naturally a large quantity of emulsive or milky juices. Such are lettuce, spurge, fig tree, and the tree which furnishes the elastic American resin. The milky juices obtained from all these vegetables derive their whiteness from an oily matter, mixed and undissolved in a watery or mucilaginous liquor. Most resinous gums were originally such milky juices, which afterwards become solid by milky way, the evaporation of their more fluid and volatile parts.

Milk Fever. See Medicine Index.

Milk Hedge, the English name of a shrub growing on the coast of Coromandel, where it is used for hedging. The whole shrub grows very bushy, with numerous erect branches, which are composed of cylindrical joints as thick as a tobacco pipe, of a green colour, and from three to five inches long: the joints are thicker than the other parts, but always give way first on any accidental violence offered to the plant. When broken it yields a milk of an excessively caustic quality, which blister any part of the skin it touches. When the joints are broken off at each end, the tube then contains but very little milk. In this state Mr Ives ventured to touch it with his tongue, and found it a little sweet. In the hedges it is seldom very woody; but when it is, the wood is very solid, and the bark gray and cracked. This plant, he informs us, has acquired great reputation in curing the venereal disease, on the following account: A poor Portuguese woman, the eldest female of her family, had wrought surprising cures in the most intractable venereal disorders, even such as the European physicians had pronounced incurable. These facts became so notorious, that the servants of the Company, and especially their surgeons, were induced to offer her a very considerable premium for a discovery of the medicine; but she always refused to comply, giving for a reason, that while it remained a secret, it was a certain provision for the maintenance of the family in the present as well as in future generations. On account of this denial the English surgeons were sometimes at the pains to have her motions without doors carefully watched; and as they were not able to discover that she ever gathered of any other plant or tree but this, they conjectured that the milk of this tree was the specific employed. Mr Ives inquired at the black doctors concerning the virtues of this plant; who all agreed, that it will cure the lues venerea, but differed as to the manner of administering it; some saying that a joint of it should be eaten every morning; others that the milk only should be dropped upon sugar; and then put into milk, oil, &c., and given daily to the patient.

Milk Way. See Astronomy Index.

Mill, a machine for grinding corn, &c., of which there are various kinds, according to the different methods of applying the moving power; as water-mills, wind-mills, mills worked by horses, &c. See Mechanics Index.

The first obvious method of reducing corn into flour for bread would be by the simple expedient of pounding. And that was for ages the only one which was practised by the various descendants of Adam, and actually continued in use among the Romans below the reign of Vespasian. But the process was very early improved by the application of a grinding power, and the introduction of millstones. This, like most of the common refinements in domestic life, was probably the invention of the antediluvian world, and certainly practised in some of the earliest ages after it; and, like most of them, it was equally known in the east and west. Hence the Gauls and Britons appear familiarly acquainted with the use of hand-mills before the time of their submission to the Romans; the Britons particularly larly distinguishing them, as the Highlanders and we distinguish them at present, by the simple appellations of querns, corners, or stones. And to these Romans added the very useful invention of water mills. For this discovery the world is pretty certainly indebted to the genius of Italy; and the machine was not uncommon in the country at the conquest of Lancashire. This, therefore, the Romans would necessarily introduce with their many other refinements among us.

And that they actually did, the British appellation of a water-mill fully suggests itself; the melin of the Welsh and Cornish, the mull, meil, and melin of the Armoricans, and the Irish molcan and molcinn, being all evidently derived from the Roman mola and molendinum. The subject Britons universally adopted the Roman name, but applied it, as we their successors do, only to the Roman mill; and one of these was probably erected at every stationary city in the kingdom.

One plainly was at Manchester, serving equally the purposes of the town and the accommodation of the garrison.—And one alone would be sufficient, as the use of handmills remained very common in both, many having been found about the site of the station particularly; and the general practice having defended among us nearly to the present period. Such it would be peculiarly necessary to have in the camp, that the garrison might be provided against a siege. And the water-mill at Manchester was fixed immediately below the Castlefield and the town, and on the channel of the Medlock. There, a little above the ancient ford, the sluice of it was accidentally discovered about 30 years ago. On the margin of Dyer's croft, and opposite to some new constructions, the current of the river, accidentally swelled with the rains, and obstructed by a dam, broke down the northern bank, swept away a large oak upon the edge of it, and disclosed a long tunnel in the rock below. This has been since laid open in part with a spade. It appeared entirely uncovered at the top, was about a yard in width, and another in depth, but gradually narrowed to the bottom. The sides showed everywhere the marks of the tool on the rock, and the course of it was parallel with the channel. It was barred by the flood about 25 yards only in length, but was evidently continued for several further; having originally begun, as the nature of the ground evinces, just above the large curve in the channel of the Medlock.

For the first five or six centuries of the Roman state, there were no public bread bakers in the city of Rome. They were first introduced into it from the east, at the conclusion of the war with Perseus, and about the year 167 before Christ. And, towards the close of the first century, the Roman families were supplied by them every morning with fresh loaves for breakfast.—But the same custom, which prevailed originally among the Romans and many other nations, has continued nearly to the present time among the Mancuniens. The providing of bread for every family was left entirely to the attention of the women in it; and it was baked upon stones, which the Welsh denominate greidiols and we griddles. It appears, however, from the kiln-burnt pottery which has been discovered in the British sepulchres, and from the British appellation of an odyne or oven remaining among us at present, that furnaces for baking were generally known among the original Britons. An odyne would, therefore, be erected at the mansion of each British baron, for the use of himself and his retainers. And, when he and they removed into the vicinity of a Roman station, the oven would be rebuilt with the mansion, and the public bakehouses of our towns commence at the first foundation of them. One bakehouse would be constructed, as we have previously shown one mill to have been set up, for the public service of all the Mancunian families.

One oven and one mill appear to have been equally established in the town. And the inhabitants of it appear immemorially accustomed to bake at the one and grind at the other. Both, therefore, were in all probability constructed at the first introduction of water-mills and ovens into the country. The great similarity of the appointments refers the consideration directly to one and the same origin for them. And the general nature of all such institutions points immediately to the first and actual introduction of both. And, as the same establishments prevailed equally in other parts of the north, and pretty certainly obtained over all the extent of Roman Britain, the same erections were as certainly made at every stationary town in the kingdom.