a small vessel proper to contain liquors, made of leather, glass, or stone. The word is formed from butellus or botellus, used in barbarous Latin writers, for a lesser vessel of wine; being a diminutive of bota, which denoted a butt or cask of that liquor.

The ancient Jewish bottles were cases made of goats or other wild beasts' skins, with the hair on the inside, well sewed and pitched together; an aperture in one of the animals' paws serving for the mouth of the vessel.

Glass bottles are better for cider than those of stone. Foul glass bottles are cured by rolling sand or small shot in them; muddy bottles, by boiling them. See GLASS.

Bottles are chiefly made of thick coarse glass; though there are likewise bottles of boiled leather made and sold by the case-makers. Fine glass-bottles covered with straw or wicker, are called flagons or bettes. The quality of the glass has been sometimes found to affect the liquor in the bottle.

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 vinous 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.—Potash is recommended for cleaning bottles: a small quantity in the water will clean two groats.