the act of cleaning or purifying any fluid from heterogeneous matter or feculencies.

The substances usually employed for clarifying liquor are the albumen of eggs, blood, and isinglass. The first two are used for such liquors as are clarified whilst boiling hot; the last for those which are clarified in the cold state, such as wines, and the like. The whites of eggs are beaten up into a froth, and mixed with the liquor, when they unite with and entangle the impure matters that float in it; and presently growing hard by the heat, carry these impurities up to the surface in the form of a scum, no longer dissoluble in the liquid. Blood operates in the same manner, and is chiefly used in purifying the brine from which salt is made. Great quantities of isinglass are consumed for fining turbid wines. For this purpose some throw an entire piece, about a quarter of an ounce, into a wine cask; by degrees the glue dissolves, and forms a skin upon the surface, which at length subsiding, carries down with it the feculent matter which floated in the wine. Others previously dissolve the isinglass, and having boiled it down to a slimy consistence, mix it with the liquor, roll the cask strongly about, and then suffer it to stand to settle. Neumann questions the wholesomeness of wines thus purified, and assures us that he himself, after drinking only a few ounces of sack thus clarified, but not settled quite fine, was seized with sickness and vomiting, followed by such a vertigo, that he could not stand upright for a minute together. The giddiness continued, with nausea and want of appetite, for several days.