an instrument for ascertaining the value of worts, and the strength of different kinds of malt liquor. The name signifies a measurer of sweetness. An instrument of this kind has been invented by a Mr Richardson of Hull, on the following principle. The menstruum or water, employed by the brewer, becomes more dense by the addition of such parts of the materials as have been dissolved or extracted by, and thence incorporated with it: the operation of boiling, and its subsequent cooling, still adds to the density of it by evaporation; so that when it is submitted to the action of fermentation, it is denser than at any other period.

In passing through this natural operation, a remarkable alteration takes place. The fluid no sooner begins to ferment than its density begins to diminish; and as the fermentation is more or less perfect, the fermentable matter, whose accretion has been traced by the increase of density, becomes more or less attenuated; and in place of every particle thus attenuated, a spirituous particle, of less density than water, is produced; so that when the liquor is again in a state of rest, it is so much specifically lighter than it was before, as the action of fermentation has been capable of attenuating the component parts of its acquired density; and if the whole were attenuated in this manner, the liquor would become lighter, or less dense than water, because the quantity of spirit produced from the fermentable matter, and occupying its place, would diminish the density of the water in some degree of proportion to that in which the latter has increased it.