sly,
than the plant can absorb it.

It is probably this saccharine process, which obtains in new hay-stacks too
hastily, and which by immediately running into fermentation produces so
much heat as to set them on fire. The greatest part of the grain, or seeds,
or roots, used in the distilleries, as wheat, canary seed, potatoes, are
not I believe previously subjected to germination, but are in part by a
chemical process converted into sugar, and immediately subjected to vinous
fermentation; and it is probable a process may sometime be discovered of
producing sugar from starch or meal; and of separating it from them for
domestic purposes by alcohol, which dissolves sugar but not mucilage; or by
other means.

Another method of increasing the nutriment of mankind by cookery, is by
dissolving cartilages and bones, and tendons, and probably some vegetables,
in steam or water at a much higher degree of heat than that of boiling.
This is to be done in a close vessel, which is called Papin's digester; in
which, it is said, that water may be made red-hot, and will then dissolve
all animal substances; and might thus add to our quantity of food in times
of scarcity. This vessel should be made of iron, and should have an oval
opening at top, with an oval lid of iron larger than the aperture; this lid
should be slipped in endways, when the vessel is filled, and then turned,
and raised by a screw above it into contact with the under edges of the
aperture. There should also be a small tube or hole covered with a weighted
valve to prevent the danger of bursting the digester.

Where the powers of digestion are weakened, broths made by boiling animal
and vegetable substances in water afford a nutriment; though I suppose not
so great as the flesh and vegetables would afford, if taken in their solid
form, and mixed with saliva in the act of mastication. The aliment thus
prepared should be boiled but a short time, nor should be suffered to
continue in our common kitchen-utensils afterwards, as they are lined with
a mixture of half lead and half tin, and are therefore unwholesome, though
the copper is completely covered. And those soups, which have any acid or
wine boiled in them, unless they be made in silver, or in china, or in
those pot-vessels, which are not glazed by the addition of lead, are truly
poisonous; as the acid, as lemon-juice or vinegar, when made hot, erodes or
dissolves the lead and tin lining of the copper-vessels, and the