A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume I (of 2)

1494

Meisnische Bergchronik, p. 133, tit. 16.

1495

Lib. v. De Subtil.

1496

Lib. ii. cap. 55.

1497

Magiæ Naturalis lib. vi.

1498

De Arte Vitriaria. Amst. 1668, 12mo, lib i. cap. 12, p. 32.

1499

Ibid. p. 327.

1500

Glasmacherkunst. Nurnb. 1743, 4to, p. 46.

1501

Act. Lit. et Scient. Upsal, 1733. Wallerii Syst. Min. ii. p. 164.

1502

The principal works in which information may be found on this subject, are Perrault in Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences depuis 1666 jusqu’à 1699. – Traité de la Police, par De la Mare, ii. p. 726. – Buffon, Hist. Nat. – Pallas, Spicilegia Zoologica, fascic. iv. p. 10. – Pennant, in the Philosophical Transactions, vol. lxxi. part i. p. 72. – Pennant’s Arctic Zoology, vol. ii. – Miscellanies by Daines Barrington. London, 1781, 4to, p. 127.

1503

Athenæus, Deip. lib. xiv. p. 655. Most of those passages of the ancients in which this fowl is mentioned have been collected by Gesner, in his Histor. Avium, p. 461, and by Aldrovandus in his Ornithologia, lib. xiii. p. 18. When we consider the feathers as delineated by Perrault, we shall find the comparison of Clytus more intelligible than it has appeared to many commentators.

1504

Plin. Strabo. The following passage of the Periplus Scylacis, p. 122, which I have never found cited in the history of the meleagrides, is worthy of remark. This geographer, speaking of a lake in the Carthaginian marshes, says, “Circa lacum nascitur arundo, cyperus, stœbe et juncus. Ibi meleagrides aves sunt; alibi vero nusquam nisi inde exportatæ.”

1505

Columella, viii. 2, 2, p. 634.

1506

I have here quoted nothing more than what I thought requisite to prove that the meleagrides of the ancients were our Guinea fowls, because I had no intention of treating fully on a subject which has been handled by so many others; and because I had only to show that they were not turkeys. Had not this been the case, it would have been necessary for me to collect into one point of view everything that the ancients have said of these fowls, with the words used by the different writers. It may however be said, that by this mode of examining a disputed point, a mode indeed practised by many, the reader may be led to an ill-founded approbation, because what is not agreeable to the author’s assertion may be easily concealed. But this observation is not applicable to me; for I confess that I do not know with certainty whether the Guinea fowls are as careless of their young as the meleagrides are said to have been; whether their cry, which I have often enough heard, and which is indeed unpleasant, agrees with the κακκάζειν of Pollux, v. § 90; and whether the ἀλεκτρυόνες μεγέθει μέγιστοι, mentioned in Ælian’s Hist. Animal, xvi. 2, belong to the Guinea fowls, or, as Pennant will have it, to the Pavones bicalcarati.

1507

Kennet’s Parochial Antiquities, p. 287. The meleagrides also, which Volateran saw at Rome in 1510, were of the same kind.

1508

Sommario dell’ Ind. Occid. cap. 3. In the third volume of the Collection of Voyages by Ramusio, Oviedo describes them with great minuteness, which it is unlikely he would have done had these fowls been so well known in Europe as Barrington thinks they were.

1509

The peacock pheasant of Guiana, Bancroft; Quirissai or Curassao, Brown; the crested curassow, Latham.

1510

Hist. de Mexico, p. 343.

1511

Hakluyt, vol. iii. p. 274.

1512

Pennant quotes also De Bry, but that author I never consulted.

1513

“Huexolot gallus est Indicus, quem gallipavonem quidam vocant, noruntque omnes.” – Thesaur. Rerum Med. Novæ Hispaniæ, in Append. Barrington remarks that Fernandez would not have said quem norunt omnes, had these animals been first made known from America; for Mexico was discovered in 1519, and Fernandez appears to have written about 1576. This reason, however, appears to me of little weight; especially as it is certain that these fowls, like many other productions which excited universal curiosity, were soon everywhere common. Besides, it is not certain that these words were really written by Fernandez.

1514

An English translation of Ciesa’s Voyage may be found in Stevens’s New Collection of Voyages and Travels.

1515

Vol. ii. part ii. p. 65, 85, 114. Leri seems also to have found them in Brazil, see Laet, in his Novus Orbis, Lugd. Bat. 1633, fol. p. 557. As his description, however, is not clear, and as the diligent Marggraf does not mention it among the animals of Brazil, this information appears to be very uncertain.

1516

Kalm’s Reise, ii. p. 352.

1517

Tour in the U. S. of America, by J. F. D. Smyth, 1784, 2 vols. 8vo.

1518

Crescentio lived about the year 1280. [His work Ruralium Commodorum lib. xii. was first printed in 1471.]

1519

Opera di M. Bartolomeo Scappi, Venet. 1570, 4to. The copy in the library of our university contains eighteen copper-plates, which represent different kitchen utensils, and various operations of cookery. Among the former is a smoke-jack, molinella a fumo. I am inclined to think that turkeys at this period were very little reared by farmers; for I do not find any mention of them in Trattato dell’ Agricoltura, di M. Affrico Clemente, Padovano, in Venetia 1572, 12mo; though the author treats of all other domestic birds.

1520

It is certain that the name does not occur in the List of archbishop Nevil’s feast, nor is it mentioned in the Earl of Northumberland’s Household-book, so late as the year 1512. See Latham’s Birds.

1521

This order, which is worthy of notice, may be found in the Archæologia, vol. iii. p. 157.

1522

Anderson, Hist. Commerce. Hakluyt, ii. p. 165, gives the year 1532; and in Barnaby Googe’s Art of Husbandry, the first edition, printed in 1614, as well as in several German books, the year 1530 is mentioned.

1523

Dugdale’s Origines Juridiciales, 1671, p. 135.

1524

Pennant quotes the following rhyme from Tusser’s Five Hundred Points of Husbandry: —

Beefe, mutton and porke, shred pies of the best,Pig, veale, goose and capon and turkie well drest;Cheese, apples and nuts, jolie carols to heare,As then in the countrie, is counted good cheare.

These lines he places in the year 1585, in which the edition he quotes was printed; but as there was an edition in 1557, a question arises whether they are to be found there also. [They are not there. – Ed.]

1525

Déscription du Duché de Bourgogne, par MM. Courtépée et Beguillet, Dijon, 1775, 8vo, vol. i. p. 193, and in Déscription Générale et Particulière de la France, Paris, 1781, fol. In the Description of Burgundy, p. 196, the following passage occurs: – “C’est sous le règne de Philippe le Hardi, que les gelines d’Inde furent apportées d’Artois à Dijon en 1385; ce qui montre la fausseté de la tradition, qui en attribue l’apport à l’Amiral Chabot au seizième siècle. Cent ans avant Chabot, Jaques Cœur en avoit transporté de Turquie en son château de Beaumont en Gatinois, et Americ Vespuce en Portugal.” – What impudence to make such an assertion without any proof!

1526

See the works which give a particular account of this Jacques Cœur, and which have been quoted by Meusel in Algemeine Welt Historie, xxxvii. p. 615.

1527

La Chorographie ou Déscription de Provence, par Honoré Bouche, Aix, 1664, 2 vols. fol. ii. p. 479.

1528

Essai sur l’Histoire de Provence, à Marseille, 1785. 2 vols. 4to.

1529

De Re Cibaria, lib. xv. cap. 73, p. 632. This work was first published by the author in 1560, but it was written thirty years before. Turkeys, therefore, at any rate, must have been in France in 1630.

1530

Histoire de la Vie Privée des Français, par Le Grand d’Aussy, i. p. 292.

1531

Anderson. Keysler’s Travels.

1532

This is related by Le Grand, from the Journal of L’Etoile.

1533

“On lit, dans l’Année Littéraire, que Boileau, encore enfant, jouant dans une cour, tomba. Dans sa chute, sa jaquette se retrousse; un dindon lui donne plusieurs coups de bec sur une partie très-délicate. Boileau en fut toute sa vie incommodé; et de-là, peut-être, cette sévérité de mœurs, … sa satyre contre les femmes… Peut-être son antipathie contre les dindons occasionna-t-elle l’aversion secrette qu’il eut toujours pour les Jésuites, qui les ont apportés en France.” – Helvetius de l’Esprit. Amst. 1759, 12mo. i. p. 288.

1534

De Re Rustica. Spiræ Nemet. 1595, 8vo, lib. iv. p. 640.

1535

Hausbuch, vol. iv. Wittenberg, 1611, 4to, p. 499.

1536

Œkonomische Nachrichten der Schlesischen Gesellschaft, 1773, p. 306. For the festival of the university of Wittenberg, in 1602, fifteen Indian or Turkey fowls were purchased at the rate of a florin each. They were in part dressed with lemon-sauce.

1537

Bell’s Travels, i. p. 128.

1538

“Turkeys (poulets d’Inde) are there foreign and scarce birds. The Armenians, about thirty years ago, carried from Constantinople to Ispahan a great number of them, which they presented to the king as a rarity; but it is said that the Persians, not knowing the method of breeding them, gave in return the care of them to these people, and assigned a different house for each. The Armenians, however, finding them troublesome and expensive, suffered them almost all to perish. I saw some which were reared in the territory of Ispahan, four leagues from the city, by the Armenian peasants; but they were not numerous. Some imagine that these birds were brought from the East Indies; but this is so far from being the case, that there are none of them in that part of the world. They must have come from the West Indies, although they are called cocqs d’Inde because, being larger than common fowls, they in that resemble the Indian fowls, which are of much greater size than the common fowls of other countries.” – Voyages de Chardin, iv. p. 84.

1539

Hakluyt, ii. p. 825.

1540

Rélation Universelle d’Afrique. Lyon 1688, iv. p. 426.

1541

Perroniana, p. 67.

1542

Leland’s Itinerary. Oxford, 1744, vol. vi. p. 5.

1543

Minshew’s Guide into Tongues, 1617, fol.

1544

The works with which I am acquainted that treat on this subject, are the following: – M. Schoockii Tractatus de Butyro: accessit ejusdem Diatriba de aversatione Casei. Groningæ, 1664, 12mo. – H. Conring De habitus corporum Germanicorum antiqui et novi caussis. Helmst. 1666, 4to, or Frankf. 1727, 8vo. – Vossii Etymologicon, art. Butyrum. – Traité de la Police, par De la Mare, lib. v. 7. ii. p. 799. – Tob. Waltheri Dissert. de Butyro. Altorfii, 1743. – Conr. Gesneri Libellus de lacte et operibus lactariis, 1543, 8vo. This small treatise I have hitherto sought for in vain.

1545

Bochart, Hierozoicon, ii. 45, p. 473.

1546

Genesis, chap. xviii. ver. 8: “And he took butter and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set before them.” Deuteron. chap. xxxii. ver. 14: “Butter of kine and milk of sheep.” Judges, chap. v. ver. 25: “He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in a lordly dish.” 2 Samuel, chap. xvii. ver. 29: “And honey, and butter, and sheep.” Job, chap. xx. ver. 17: “He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter.” Ibid. chap. xxix. ver. 6: “When I washed my steps with butter and the rock poured me out rivers of oil.” Proverbs, chap. xxx. ver. 33: “Surely the churning of milk bringeth forth butter.” Isaiah, chap. vii. ver. 15: “Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good.” Ibid. ver. 22: “And it shall come to pass, for the abundance of milk that they shall give, that he shall eat butter; for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the land.”

1547

Michaelis Suppl. ad Lex. Hebr. v. i. p. 807; and his Mosaisches Recht (on the Laws of Moses), § 291 and 295.

1548

iv. 2. p. 281: “Postquam emulxere lac, in cava vasa lignea diffundunt; et compungentes ad illa vasa cæcos lac agitant (δονέουσι τὸ γάλα) cujus quod summum est, delibatur, pretiosiusque habetur; vilius autem quod subsidit.” – That δονέειν signifies to shake or beat, there can be no doubt. Theocritus uses the same word in speaking of a tree strongly agitated by the wind. It is used also to express the agitation of the sea during a storm; and in Geopon. xx. 46, p. 1270, where the preparation of that sauce called garum is mentioned, it is said that it must be placed in the sun, and frequently shaken.

1549

De Morbis, lib. iv. edit. 1595, fol. v. p. 67. Also in his treatise De Aëre, Locis, et Aquis, sect. iii. p. 74, he says the Scythians drink mares’-milk, and eat cheese made of it.

1550

De Natura Mulierum, sect. v. p. 137. – De Morbis Mulier. 2. sect. v. p. 191, 235, and in several other places. Vossius therefore, in his Etymolog. p. 84, says erroneously, that this word was first used by Dioscorides.

1551

Edition of Basle, 1538, fol. v. p. 715.

1552

It occurs however in Phavorinus.

1553

Athenæus, iv. p. 131. Respecting Anaxandrides see Fabricii Bibl. Gr.

1554

Historia Animal. iii. 20, p. 384: πᾶν δὲ γάλα ἔχει ἰχῶρα ὑδατώτη, ὃ καλεῖται ὀῤῥὸς, καὶ σωματῶδες, ὃ καλεῖται τυρός. Omne lac habet succum aquosum, qui dicitur serum, et alterum corpulentum, qui vocatur caseus. – P. 388: ὑπάρχει δ’ ἐν τῷ γάλακτι λιπαρότης, ἣ καὶ ἐν τοῖς πεπήγοσι γίνεται ἐλαιώδης. Inest in lacte pinguedo, quæ in concreto oleosa fit. This is the translation of Scaliger; but by Gaza the latter part of the passage is translated as follows: “quæ etiam concreto oleum prope trahit.” It appears to me doubtful what ἐν τοῖς πεπήγοσι properly means. The comparison of oil occurs also in Dioscorides and Pliny. Aristotle, in all probability, intended to say that the fat part of milk was observed under an oily appearance in cheese made of sweet milk from which the cream had not been separated; and that indeed is perfectly agreeable to truth.

1555

Lib. iii. p. 233; xvii. p. 1176; xv. p. 1031.

1556

Histor. Æthiop. lib. iv. 4, 13.

1557

Histor. Animal. viii. 31, p. 977.

1558

Hist. Nat. viii. 10, p. 440.

1559

Hist. Animal. ii. 18.

1560

Indica. Amst. 1668, 8vo, p. 537.

1561

Lib. xiii. cap. 7.

1562

De Simplic. Med. Facultat. lib. x. p. 151. Edit. Basil. ii. p. 134.

1563

De Aliment. Facultat. iii. cap. 15, p. 54. Edit. Basil. iv. p. 340.

1564

Cæsar de Bello Gall. iv. 1. vi. 22. Strabo, lib. iv. speaking of the Britons, says, “In their manners they are somewhat similar to Celts, but more simple and barbarous; so that many, although they abound in milk, are unable to make cheese, through want of skill.”

1565

Lib. xi. c. 41, p. 637.

1566

Ib. lib. xxviii. cap. 9, p. 465.

1567

In my opinion the passage ought to be arranged as follows: – prælirato. Quod est maximum coactum, in summo fluitat. Id exemptum, addito sale, butyrum est, oleosum natura. Quod reliquum est decoquunt in ollis. Additur paululum aquæ (aceti?), ut acescat. Id quod supernatat, oxygala appellant. Quo magis virus resipit, hoc præstantius indicatur. Pluribus compositionibus miscetur inveteratum. Natura ejus adstringere, mollire, replere, purgare. – Dithmar’s emendation may be found in Taciti Libel. de Moribus German. Francof. 1766, 8vo, p. 140.

1568

Lib. xii. 8, p. 786.

1569

De Aliment. Facultat. iii. cap. 16, p. 55.

1570

Ibid. cap. 17, p. 57.

1571

Lib. xviii. 12, p. 1188.

1572

See Mercurialis, p. 38.

1573

De Moribus Germ. cap. 23.

1574

On this account some conjecture, and not without probability, that the name also βούτυρος or βούτυρον is not originally Greek, but that it may have been introduced into Greece from some foreign country, along with the thing which it expresses. Conring, for example, is of opinion that it is of Scythian extraction. The Grecian and Roman authors, however, make it to be a Greek word, compounded of βοῦς, an ox or cow, and τυρὸς, cheese, as we learn from the passages of Galen and Pliny already quoted. Cheese was known to them much earlier than butter; and it is therefore possible, that at first they may have considered the latter as a kind of cheese, as it appears that τυρὸς once signified any coagulated substance. The first syllable of the word, indeed, one should hardly expect, as the Greeks used the milk of sheep and goats much earlier than cow’s-milk; and for this reason Schook conjectures that the first syllable was added, as usual among the Greeks, to magnify the object, or to express a superior kind of cheese. Varro De Re Rustica, ii. 5, p. 274, says, “Novi majestatem boum, et ab his dici pleraque magna, ut βούσυκον, βούπαιδα, βούλιμον, βοῶπιν; uvam quoque bumammam;” and we find in Hesychius, “βούπαις νέος μέγας· βούπεινα, μέγας λιμὸς· βουφάγος, πολυφάγος.” But this supposes that the Greeks preferred butter to cheese; whereas they always considered the former as of less importance, and less proper for use. The same word being still retained in most languages determines nothing; especially as the Swedes use the word smor, which is totally different, and which was the oldest German name, and that most used in the ninth century; and Lipsius, in an old dictionary of that period, found the word kuosmer butyrum, the first syllable of which is certainly the word kuh, a cow. See Lipsii Epist. ad Belgas, cent. iii. 44, and Wormii Litteratura Runica, cap. 27. These etymological researches, which must always be uncertain, I shall not carry further; but only remark that, according to Hesychius, butter, in Cyprus, where I did not expect it, was called ἔλφος, which word may also be foreign. See Martini Lexic. Philol. art Butyrum, who derives ἔλφος from albus.

1575

Lib. vi. 12, p. 582.

1576

Lib. xxviii. cap. 19, p. 486.

1577

A passage of Tertullian adversus Jud. alludes to this practice. The same words are repeated Adversus Marcion. iii. 13.

1578

Sidonius Apollinaris, carm. 12.

1579

Clemens Alexand. Pædag. i. p. 107.

1580

When Leodius accompanied the elector palatine Frederic II. in his travels through Spain, he was desirous of purchasing in that country several articles necessary for their journey. After much inquiry concerning butter, he was directed to an apothecary’s shop, where the people were much astonished at the largeness of the quantity he asked for, and showed him a little entirely rancid, which was kept in a bladder for external use. H. Th. Leodii Vita et Res Gestæ Frederici Palatini. Francof. 1665, 4to, lib. vi.

1581

Lib. x. p. 447.

1582

What Hippocrates calls ἔλαιον ὑὸς Erotian explains by τὸ ὕειον στέαρ.

1583

Suhm, in the eighth vol. of the Transactions of the Copenhagen Society, where a reference is made, p. 53, respecting the above-mentioned circumstance, to Torfæi Histor. Norveg. pars. i. vi. sect. iii. cap. 2, p. 319.

1584

[That this and other similar chemical phænomena may be of more advantage than as affording merely subjects for speculation to the philosopher, although not immediately applicable to any useful purpose, may be inferred from the valuable application of fulminating mercury, a somewhat similar compound to that under consideration. This, at first, as with fulminating gold at present, was a mere curiosity; it has recently caused the almost complete substitution of percussion for flint locks in fire-arms, which in addition to the greater certainty caused by the increased rapidity of the discharge, œconomises the quantity of powder requisite.

Fulminating mercury is made by dissolving mercury in nitric acid and pouring the solution into warm alcohol. Effervescence ensues. When this has ceased, the mixture is poured upon a filter, and well-washed with water; after draining, the filter is expanded upon plated copper or stone-ware, heated to 212° by steam or hot water. Dr. Ure recommends that the powder be mixed with a solution of mastic in spirits of turpentine, to cause attachment. Its extensive use in making percussion-caps is well-known. It is however a very dangerous substance to experiment with, owing to the readiness with which it explodes, and has caused many very serious accidents.]

1585

Spielmann, Institut. Chem. p. 288.

1586

See Preface of B. N. Petræus to the Works of Valentin, Hamb. 1717, 8vo.

1587

Fr. Basilii Valentini Letztes Testament; Von G. P. Nenter. Strasb. 1712, 8vo, p. 223.

1588

See Bergmann on Pulvis fulminans, in his Opuscula Physica et Chemica, 1780, 8vo, ii. p. 133.

1589

O. Crollii Basilica Chymica. Franc. (1609), 4to, p. 211.

1590

J. Beguini Tyrocinium Chymicum was printed for the first time at Paris, in 1608, 12mo. In the French translation, Les élémens de chymie, revues, expliquez, etc., par J. L. de Roy; Paris, 1626, 8vo, the receipt for making or fulminant may be found p. 314.

1591

Kircheri Magnes. Coloniæ, 1643, 4to, p. 548. The author says that he found the receipt for preparing it in Liber insignis de incendio Vesuvii. That I might know whether this work contained anything respecting the history of aurum fulminans, I inquired after it. Kircher undoubtedly meant Incendio del Monte Vesuvio, di Pietro Castelli; in Roma 1632, 4to: but the directions given there, p. 46, for making oro fulminante, are taken from Crollius. Nothing further is to be found in Kircher’s Mundus Subterraneus.

1592

Hagæ, 1599, fol.

1593

Miller’s Gardener’s Dictionary.