In this series of structures, we have not only the gizzard becoming more and more fitted to economize the food as the country becomes less fertile, but we have also an extension of the lower intestines, and cæca, to such a degree as to lead to the belief that the processes carried on in them, render the undigested food subservient to the animal's support.

X. Additional Remarks on the State in which Alcohol exists in fermented Liquors. By William Thomas Brande, Esq. F.R.S..

THE

Read December 17, 1812.

HE experiments and observations contained in this paper, are intended as supplementary to a communication on the same subject, which the Royal Society has done me the honour to insert in the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1811.*

On that occasion, I endeavoured to refute the commonly received opinion respecting the production of alcohol during the distillation of fermented liquors, by shewing, that the results of the process are not affected by a variation of temperature equal to twenty degrees of FAHRENHEIT's scale; that is, that a similar quantity of alcohol is afforded by distilling wine at 180° and at 200°.

I also conceived that any new arrangement of the ultimate elements of the wine, which could have given rise to the formation of alcohol, would have been attended with other symptoms of decomposition, that carbon would have been deposited, or carbonic acid evolved, which in the experiments alluded to, was not the case. Upon such grounds I ventured to conclude, that the relative quantity of alcohol in wines, might be estimated by submitting them to a careful distillation, and by ascertaining the specific gravity of the distilled liquor with the precautions which I have formerly described.

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