a provincial phrase of Devonshire, denoting a cheap and easily prepared drink, highly commended for preventing the scurvy in long voyages, or for the cure of it where it may have been contracted. It is prepared in the following manner: Take twelve gallons of water, in which put three pounds and a half of black spruce: boil it for three hours, and having taken out the fir or spruce, mix with the liquor seven pounds of melafies, and just boil it up; strain it through a sieve, and when milk-warm put to it about four spoonfuls of yeast to work it. In two or three days stop the bung of the cask: and in five or six days, when fine, bottle it for drinking. Two gallons of melafies are sufficient for a hoghead of liquor; but if melafies cannot be procured, treacle or coarse sugar will answer the purpose.

**CHRÉMINTZ**, the principal of the mine towns in Upper Hungary, situated about 68 miles north-east of Pressburg, and subject to the house of Austria. E. Long. 19. N. Lat. 48. 45.

**CHRÉNECRUDA**, a term occurring in writers of the middle ages, and expressing a custom of those times; but its signification is doubtful. It is mentioned in *Lega Salica*, tit. 61, which says, he who kills a man, and hath not wherewithal to satisfy the law or pay the fine, makes oath that he hath delivered up everything he was possessed of; the truth of which must be confirmed by the oaths of 12 other persons. Then he invites his next relations by the father's side to pay off the remainder of the fine, having first made over to them all his effects by the following ceremony. He goes into his house, and taking in his hand a small quantity of dust from each of the four corners, he returns to the door, and with his face inwards throws the dust with his left hand over his shoulders upon his nearest of kin. Whiche done, he strips to his shirt; and coming out with a pole in his hand, jumps over the hedge. His relations, whether one or several, are upon this obliged to pay off the composition for the murder. And if these (or any one of them) are not able to pay *iuerum super illum chreneecruda*, qui *pauperior est*, *jaclat*, et ille totam legem componat. Whence it appears, that *chreneecruda jaclare*, is the same with throwing the dust gathered from the four corners of the house. Goldasius and Spelman translate it *viridem herbam*, "green grass," from the German *gruen kraut*, or from the Dutch *groen*, "green," and *graad*, "grass." Wendelinus is of a contrary opinion, who thinks that by this word *denotari purificatios approbationem*, from *chrein*, "pure, chaste, clean;" and *keuren*, "to prove;" so that it must refer to the oaths of the twelve jurors. Be this as it will, King Childbert reformed this law by a decree, chap. 15, both because it favoured of Pagan ceremonies, and because several persons were thereby obliged to make over all their effects: *De chreneecruda lex quam paganorum tempore observabant, deinceps nunquam valeat, quia per ipsam cecidet multorum potestas*.