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

Several writers have asserted that sal-ammoniac comes also from the East Indies. It is mentioned by Tavernier among the wares which in his time were brought from Amadabat, in the territories of the Mogul, to Surat; and Geoffroy states, that when the trade of Marseilles was interrupted by the plague, the French obtained from Holland sal-ammoniac, which was shaped like a truncated cone, and was given out to be Indian1002. Pomet also says, that some of the same kind was formerly procured from Venice and Holland. But Gaubius asserts that he was never able to hear of any such sal-ammoniac in Holland1003; nor is it to be found in the price currents of the East India Company. I am almost inclined to suspect that these truncated cones were formed by the merchants from broken pieces or fragments of the Egyptian sal-ammoniac, by solution and imperfect crystallization or sublimation. In this manner the merchants at Marseilles convert the refuse of the Egyptian sal-ammoniac into cakes by a new sublimation, in order that it may become more saleable, though it is not readily purchased by artists. Gaubius, however, has described a kind of sal-ammoniac which he obtained from India, with the information that it was made in Hindostan from the soot of animal dung; but in my opinion this requires further confirmation1004.

Where and at what time the first works for making sal-ammoniac were established in Europe, I am not able to determine. The account given by Thurneisser, that the first sal-ammoniac was made in the Tyrol in the ninth century, is truly ridiculous. It is not worth the trouble to inquire where he or Paracelsus found this foolish assertion. One might be almost induced to believe, that in the time of Boyle there were manufactories of sal-ammoniac in Europe1005. But perhaps there may be no other foundation for all this than the before-mentioned assertion of Cæsalpinus, that this salt came from Germany. At Bamberg, the Germans were long accustomed to boil the sediment of the salt-pans with old urine, and to sell it cheap for sal-ammoniac; and Weber asserts that some of the same kind is still made at Vienna. The hundred weight costs from twenty to thirty florins, but the refuse may be purchased for a mere trifle. If I am not mistaken, the first real manufactories of sal-ammoniac were established in Scotland; and the oldest of these, perhaps, was that erected by Dovin and Hutton at Edinburgh in 1756, and which, like many in England, manufactures this salt on a large scale1006. Among the later undertakings of this kind is Gravenhorst’s manufactory at Brunswick, and that which in the neighbourhood of Gothenburg manufactures sal-ammoniac from the refuse left in making train oil.

[Sal-ammoniac is now prepared either by the destructive distillation of bones or coal. The gas-liquor supplies, we believe, the largest part. This fluid contains hydrosulphuret and carbonate with some other salts of ammonia. It is decomposed with sulphuric acid, and on evaporation the sulphate of ammonia is obtained in a crystalline state. This is then mixed with common salt and the mixture heated in iron vessels, whereupon the muriate of ammonia sublimes.

Sal-ammoniac is exported in considerable quantities to Russia and other parts of the continent and to the United States.]

FORKS

At present forks are so necessary at table among polished nations, that the very idea of eating a meal without them excites disgust. The introduction of them, however, is of so modern a date, that they have scarcely been in use three centuries. “Tam prope ab origine rerum sumus,” says Pliny, in speaking of a thing which, though very new, was then exceedingly common. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans have any name for these instruments; and no phrase or expression which, with the least probability, can be referred to the use of them, occurs anywhere in their writings. But had forks been known, this could not have been the case, since so many entertainments are celebrated by the poets or described by other writers; and they must also have been mentioned by Pollux, in the very full catalogue which he has given of articles necessary for the table.

The Greek word creagra signified indeed a fork, but not a fork used at table. It meant merely a flesh-fork, or that instrument employed by cooks to take meat from a boiling pot, as is proved by the connexion of the words in all those passages where it occurs. It is mentioned by Pollux, and by Anaxippus, in Athenæus1007, among the utensils of the kitchen; and the scholiast on Aristophanes says that this fork had a resemblance to the hand, and was used to prevent the fingers from being scalded. Suidas quotes a passage where the word denotes a hook at the end of a long pole, with which people, even at present, draw up water-buckets from wells and other deep places. This instrument, therefore, appears sometimes to have had only a hook, but sometimes two or more prongs. Creagra occurs once in Martianus Capella, a Latin writer, but in a passage which is not intelligible.

Equally inapplicable to our forks are the words furca, fuscina, fucilla, fuscinula, and gabalus, which are given in dictionaries. The first two were undoubtedly instruments which approached nearly to our furnace and hay forks. The trident of Neptune also was called fuscina. The furcilla even was large enough to be employed for a weapon of defence, as is proved by the expressions furcillis ejicere and expellere. Fuscinula, which in modern times is used chiefly for a table fork, is not to be found even once in any of the old Latin writers. The old translation of the Bible only explains the word κρεάγρα by fuscinula. Gabalus, according to every appearance, has given rise to the German word gabeln, but it denotes the cross or gallows, which last word Voscius deduces from it.

A learned Italian, who asserts also that the use of forks is very new, is of opinion that the Romans often used ligulæ instead of forks1008. This I shall not deny; but the ligula certainly had more resemblance to a small spatula, or tea-spoon, than to our forks. According to Martial, many spoons at the other end seem to have been ligulæ1009. But the two epigrams must be read in conjunction, so that the second may appear a continuation of the first; for the epithets habilis and utilis can be applied to no other term than ligula. Besides, it is certain that the titles of the epigrams, or at least the greater part of them, were not added by the poet, but by transcribers. The name also, which originally was lingula, gives an idea of the form. We read likewise that this instrument was used for scumming, for which purpose nothing is less fit than a fork1010.

I have, I know not how, a great unwillingness to represent the tables of our ancestors as without forks; yet this was certainly the case: and when we reflect on their manner of eating, it will readily be perceived that they could much easier dispense with the use of them than we can. All their food, as is still customary in the East, was dressed in such a manner as to be exceedingly tender, and therefore could be easily pulled to pieces. It appears however that people, though not in the earliest periods, employed the same means as our cooks, and suffered meat to lie some time that it might be easier dressed. We often read that cooks, in order to provide an entertainment speedily, will kill an animal, and having cleaned and divided it, roast it immediately, and then serve it up to their guests. But it is well known that the flesh of animals newly killed, if cooked before it has entirely lost its natural warmth, is exceedingly tender and savoury, as we are assured in many books of travels.

Formerly all articles of food were cut into small morsels before they were served up; and this was the more necessary, as the company did not sit at table, but lay on couches turned towards it, consequently could not well use both their hands for eating. For cutting meat, persons of rank kept in their houses a carver, who had learned to perform his duty according to certain rules, and who was called scissor, carpus, carptor, and by Apuleius is named diribitor1011. This person used a knife, the only one placed on the table, and which in the houses of the opulent had an ivory handle, and was commonly ornamented with silver1012.

Bread also was never cut at table. In former times it was not baked so thick as at present, but rather like cakes, and could easily be broken; hence mention is so often made of the breaking of bread. Juvenal, when he wishes to describe old bread, does not say that it could not be cut, but that it could not be broken1013. The ancient form of bread is still retained in the paschal cake of the Jews, and in the knæckbröd1014 of the Swedes. The latter, which is almost as brittle as biscuit, is not cut when used, but broken.

The Chinese, who also use no forks, have however small sticks of ivory, which are often of very fine workmanship, and inlaid with silver and gold. A couple of these is placed before each guest, who employs them for putting into his mouth the meat which has been cut into small bits. But even this resource was not known two centuries ago in Europe, where people, as is still done by the Turks, everywhere used their fingers. As a proof, I shall not quote passages where mention is made of persons putting their hands or fingers into the dish1015; for such a mode of speaking is yet employed, though forks, as is well known, are in common use. I shall refer only to one passage in Ovid, which admits of no doubt1016, and where the author would certainly have mentioned these instruments, or rather have communicated to his pupils in the art of love a precept which at present is given to children, had the former been taught when young how to make use of forks.

Had they been used by the Romans, they must necessarily have occurred among the numerous remains of antiquity which have been collected in modern times. But Baruffaldi and Biörnstähl1017, who both made researches respecting them, assure us that they were never able to find any. Count Caylus1018 and Grignon1019 only assert the contrary. The former has given a figure and description of a silver two-pronged fork, which was found among rubbish in the Appian Way. It is of exceedingly beautiful workmanship, and at one end terminates in a stag’s foot. Notwithstanding the high reputation of this French author, I cannot possibly admit that everything of which he has given figures is so old as he seems to imagine. Grignon found in the ruins of a Roman town in Champagne some articles which he considers as table-forks; but he merely mentions them, without giving a description sufficient to convince one of the truth of what he asserts, which, in regard to a thing so unexpected, was certainly requisite. One fork was of copper or brass; two others were of iron; and he says, speaking of the latter, that they seem to have served as table-forks, but were coarsely made. I however doubt whether he conjectured right in regard to the use of them.

As far as I know, the use of forks was first known in Italy towards the end of the fifteenth century; but at that time they were not very common. Galeotus Martius, an Italian, resident at the court of Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, who reigned from 1458 to 1490, relates, in a book which he wrote in regard to the life and actions of this prince, that in Hungary, at that time, forks were not used at table, as they were in many parts of Italy1020, but that at meals each person laid hold of the meat with his fingers, and on that account they were much stained with saffron, which was then put into sauces and soup. He praises the king for eating without a fork, yet conversing at the same time and never dirtying his clothes.

That in France, at the end of the sixteenth century, forks even at court were entirely new, is proved by a book, already quoted in the present volume of this work, entitled l’Isle des Hermaphrodites. It will therefore excite no wonder that in the same century forks were not used in Sweden.

But it must appear very strange that Thomas Coryate, the traveller, should see forks for the first time in Italy, and in the same year be the first person who used them in England, on which account he was called, by way of joke, Furcifer1021.

In many parts of Spain, at present, drinking-glasses, spoons and forks are rarities1022; and even yet, in taverns, in many countries, particularly in some towns of France, knives are not placed on the table, because it is expected that each person should have one of his own; a custom which the French seem to have retained from the old Gauls. But as no person would any longer eat without forks, landlords were obliged to furnish these, together with plates and spoons.

Among the Scotch highlanders, as Dr. Johnson asserts, knives have been introduced at table only since the time of the revolution. Before that period every man had a knife of his own as a companion to his dirk or dagger. The men cut the meat into small morsels for the women, who then put them into their mouths with their fingers. The use of forks at table was at first considered as a superfluous luxury, and therefore they were forbidden to convents, as was the case in regard to the congregation of St. Maur.

The English, Dutch and French have adopted the Italian names forca and forchetta, given to our table-forks; though these appellations, in my opinion, were used at an earlier period to denote large instruments, such as pitch-forks, flesh-forks, furnace-forks; because in the low German, forke is a very old name given to such implements. The German word gabel, which occurs first in dictionaries for these large instruments, is of great antiquity, and has been still retained in the Swedish and Dutch. It appears to have been used for many things which were split or divided into two; at any rate, it is certain that it is not derived from the Latin word gabalus.

LOTTERY. TONTINE

At present there are two kinds of lottery in Europe. One is called the Italian or Genoese lotto, or merely the lotto; the other is the common lottery well known in England. Of the former, which has been long proved to be attended with great deception, and must soon be universally acknowledged to be hurtful, I do not mean here to treat, but only of the latter, which at any rate may be honourable or harmless, if we do not take into account the delusion it occasions to credulous and ignorant people, by exciting hopes which have little probability in their favour. I however do not promise a complete history of this invention: it experienced so many changes before it acquired its present form, that to give a full account of them would be tiresome to me as well as to the reader.

I shall not either, as some have done, reckon among the first traces of lotteries every division of property made by lot, otherwise it might be said, that Joshua partitioned the promised land into lottery-prizes, before it was conquered. In my opinion the peculiarity of lotteries consists in this, that numbers are distributed gratuitously, or, as in our public lotteries, for a certain price, and it is then left to chance to determine what numbers are to obtain the prizes, the value of which is previously settled. The various conditions and changes invented by ingenuity to entice people to purchase shares, and to conceal and increase the gain of the undertakers, are not here taken into consideration, because they do not appear to be essential.

In the whole history of antiquity, I find nothing which has a greater resemblance to our lotteries than the congiaria of the Romans; and I am inclined to think that the latter furnished the first hint for the establishment of the former. Rich persons at Rome, as is well known, and particularly the emperors, when they wished to gain or to strengthen the attachment of the people, distributed among them presents, consisting of eatables and other expensive articles, which were named congiaria. In general, tokens or tickets called tesseræ1023 were given out, and the possessors of these, on presenting them at the store or magazine of the donor, received those things which they announced. In many cases these tickets were distributed viritim, that is, to every person who applied for them; and in that case these donations had a resemblance to our distributions of bread, but not to our lotteries, in which chance must determine the number of those who are to participate in the things distributed.

But in the course of time it became customary to call the people together, and to throw among them, from a stage, the articles intended for distribution, in the same manner as money is scattered among the populace at the coronation of the emperor, and on other solemnities. Such things, in this case, were called missilia, and belonged to those who had the good fortune to catch them. But as oil, wine, corn and other articles of the like kind, could not be distributed by throwing them in this manner, and as some articles were so much injured by the too great eagerness of the people, that they could be of little or no use, tokens or tickets were thrown out in their stead. At first these were square pieces of wood or metal, but sometimes also balls of wood inscribed with the name of the article which the possessor was to receive from the magazine1024. Like bank-notes they were payable to the bearer; and those who had obtained tesseræ were allowed to transfer or to sell them to others. This is proved by a passage in Juvenal1025, where allusion however is made only to the tesseræ frumentariæ, which were not thrown out, but distributed.

Imitations of these Roman congiaria, but indeed on a very reduced scale, have been employed in modern times by princes and princesses, in order to amuse themselves with distributing small presents to their courtiers. For this purpose various trinkets or toys are marked with numbers; these numbers are written upon separate tickets, which are rolled up and put into a small basket or basin. Each of the company then draws one out, and receives as a present the article marked with the same number. These small congiaria were formerly called in German glückstöpfe, or glückshäfen; and in the course of time the present lotteries took their rise from them.

In Italy, where commerce, as is well known, was first formed into a regular system, and where the principal mercantile establishments and useful regulations were invented, the merchants or shopkeepers, even in the middle ages, were accustomed, in order that they might sell their wares in a speedier manner and with more advantage, to convert their shops into a glücksbude, where each person for a small sum of money was allowed to draw a number from the glückstöpfe (jar of fortune), which entitled him to the article written upon it. At first governments gave themselves very little trouble about this mode of selling merchandise. But as the shopkeepers gained excessive profits, and cheated the credulous people by setting on their wares an extravagant price, which was concealed by the blanks, these glückshäfen were forbidden, or permitted only under strict inspection, and in the course of time on paying a certain sum to the poor, or to the sovereign. In Germany they are still retained at many of the annual fairs; but in most countries they are subject to many limitations.

From these glückshäfen were produced our lotteries, when articles of merchandise were no longer employed as prizes, but certain sums of money, the value of which was determined by the amount of the money received, after the expenses and gain required by the undertakers were deducted, and when the tickets were publicly drawn by charity-boys blindfolded. As these lotteries could not be conducted without defrauding the adventurers, it was at first believed, through old-fashioned conscientiousness, that it was unlawful to take advantage of the folly and credulity of the people, but for pious or charitable purposes.

Lotteries were then established by private persons, and in the course of time even by governments; and the clear gain was applied to the purpose of portioning poor young women, of redeeming slaves, of forming funds for the indigent, and to other objects of beneficence. It was also hoped that these public games of hazard would banish other kinds still more dangerous; and no one suspected that the exposing of tickets for sale, and the division of them, so that one could purchase an eighth or even a smaller share, would maintain and diffuse the taste of the public for gambling. This, however, increased; and the profit of lotteries became so great, that princes and ministers were induced to employ them as an operation of finance, and to hold the bank which always enriched the undertakers. People were then forbidden to purchase tickets in foreign lotteries, that the money won from the adventurers might pass into the sovereign’s treasury, or at any rate be retained in the country; and in order that tickets might be disposed of sooner and with more certainty, many rulers were so shameless as to pay the salaries of their servants partly in tickets, and to compel guild companies and societies to expend in lotteries what money they had saved1026.

Of the oldest lotteries among the Italians I have not been able to find any account. Varchi, who wrote about the year 1537, relates that during a great scarcity of money at Florence in 1530, a lottery was established for the benefit of the state, and that the price of a ticket was a ducat. He however does not employ the term lottery, but uses the words un lotto, and calls a ticket polizza, a term which, as is well known, is generally used in regard to insurance. Le Bret says, that at Venice, in 1572, the inspection of lotteries was entrusted to the proveditori del commune; but as he does not mention the historian from whom this account is borrowed, the word which he translates lottery cannot be known. We nevertheless learn from his account, that this game was established at Venice in the middle of the sixteenth century, and placed under the inspection of the government.

It is certain that the chance game which gave rise to lotteries was brought from Italy to France under the name of blanque, a word formed from the Italian bianca. The greater part of the tickets drawn were always white paper, carta bianca, consequently blanks; and because that word occurred oftenest in drawing, it gave rise to the general appellation. Hence also is derived the phrase trouver blanque, to obtain nothing, to get a blank, or to lose. At the time Pasquier wrote1027, that is, in the last half of the sixteenth century, the name numero was also usual, because the numbers of the tickets, which were then called devises, were announced in the time of drawing. This name, instead of nombre, confirms the Italian origin. As each person in the time of drawing was attentive to his number, the phrase entendre le numero was applied to those who knew or did not forget their numbers. Hence the expression, as Pasquier remarks, Il entend le numero, which is still said of those who know their own interest, or understand how to pursue it. Frisch and others, therefore, in their dictionaries have derived it improperly from the numbers with which merchants marked their goods.

In France also the first blanques (lotteries) had no other prizes than articles of merchandise; and on that account they were set on foot only by merchants. But in the year 1539 Francis I. endeavoured to turn them to his own advantage by imitating the public establishment of them usual at Venice, Florence, and Genoa. He permitted these games of chance under the inspection of certain members of the government, with a view, as was pretended, of banishing deceptive and pernicious games of chance, on condition that for every ticket, devise or mise1028, a teston de dix sols six deniers should be given to the king. But however small the sum required may have been, this blanque was not filled up in the course of two years, and the king was obliged to recommend it by an order issued in the month of February 1541; yet it is not known whether it was ever completed1029.