nd ran
off by a small hole and bamboo tube for use again.

"In about three hours' time from lighting the fire, they draw off fully
fifteen bottles of spirits."

Comparing this simple form of apparatus with those described by Geber,
we must admit that there is no doubt of the earlier date of this simple
apparatus; and, as we have seen, distilled spirit is expressly mentioned
in the Institutes of Menu, we are bound to admit that distillation was
in use long ere the Arabian times and that of Dioscorides.

Many such examples might be examined, but I will take one for
illustration--that of the manufacture of common salt.

Let us take this manufacture as a typical one.

We find in Jackson's Antiquities and Chronology of the Chinese that,
2500 B.C., Shin-nong invented the method of obtaining salt from
sea-water. He also gets credit for having composed books on medicine.

In George Agricola's De Re Metallica (1561) there is a curious set of
woodcuts representing the manufacture of salt, and in the first, in
which the whole process of evaporating sea-water by the sun's rays is
shown most completely from the raising of the sluices to allow the water
to flow into the various evaporating ponds, to the packing of the
finished salt in barrels--it is a curious fact that the trees which are
introduced are _palms_, and the figure in the distance is dressed in
_Oriental costume_, while even the ship seems to partake of this
character.

A more advanced state of things is shown in the third drawing of the
12th book, where a pan is shown, made of iron plates riveted together so
as to form a flat sheet, which forms the bottom of the pan, of which the
sides are composed of thick wood, strengthened with plates of iron at
the corners.

The bottom of the pan has a series of iron eyes or loops, and these,
when it is fixed over its furnace, are attached to iron rods, which are
hung from a network of wooden bars, so that the whole bottom of the pan
is supported securely at a considerable number of points.

The furnace is very simple, being simply a wall surrounding an oblong
space, a little smaller than the pan, so that the sides of the latter
may rest on the walls all round, except for a small space in front where
the fuel is introduced, which apparently burns on the ground alone.

The method of manufacturing salt in Japan is almost identical with that
figured in Agricola. There is the same arrangement of salt garden or
series of ponds