“The arrangement was now completed by luting on a small copper pot or
vessel about 5 inches deep, 8 inches wide at mouth, and about 10 inches
at bottom, with its mouth downwards.

“The cooler was formed by placing on a support at the back of the
furnace an earthen vessel containing a few gallons of water, from which,
by means of a bamboo tube, the water was allowed to run on to the centre
of the copper pot, from where it collected in the clay saucer, and 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