ter is constantly withheld by
the ingesta, fuel, or food, thrown in. I am well aware I must not carry
this reasoning any further.

Deep investigation may be thought not to be the object of our research;
but we must always have two things in view in inquiries of this nature;
indeed, in every pursuit of useful knowledge, where, like the present,
it is connected with the first principles, to pursue the winding path
of nature, through all her meanderings, up to the ultimate source of
these elements, which are the instruments of her operations; and when
we are favoured with a knowledge of these, either as the reward of
laboured assiduity and attention, or the result of chance, to copy the
original as close as we can.

I know I shall be justly accused with tautology. I must plead guilty to
the charge, not having leisure to apply the pruning hook of correction.
The misfortune is, that new doctrines must appear in a new dress, by
which they wear the garb of novelty, though, with respect to first
principles, there is nothing new under the sun; yet the application of
these principles might have remained in oblivion for ever if not called
into action. The man who in an age calls them into action, and
beneficially applies them for the good of that community of which he is
a member, may be virtually, though not literally, called the discoverer
of a principle. The man that projects, and the man that executes a
voyage of discovery, have superior claims to the man at the mast head
who first cries out land. The new turn that the discoveries of modern
philosophers has given to natural philosophy, requiring a change of
names as well as system; unusual words are unavoidably introduced to
express new terms of science, which gives a different character and
fashion to the whole, that I should have great pleasure in avoiding,
were it possible, which it obviously is not, finding it easier to glide
down the stream than oppose its torrent.

Notwithstanding that I have calculated upon nineteen pounds only of
twenty-five pounds per barrel of fermentable matter being attenuated,
and have even in that quantity included five pounds eight ounces of
lees and yest, (the least quantity produced,) such calculation must not
be admitted to preclude the practicability of attenuating almost every
particle of fermentable matter, and replacing it with an equivalent
particle of spirit, if that spirit which is now carried off by the
avolation of the fixed air,