PREFACE.

are forced into a narrow space, the baser and more useless part receding, the nobler and better part is contracted and gathered, and does not go into corruption as easily as before, when the good was still mixed with the bad. And this is to be understood equally of minerals and metals, as of wine, grain, and wood. For where water has been separated from wine and beer, and the nobler parts have been contracted as if into a certain center, you will keep these uncorrupted for as long as you wish. But where wine or beer is needed, the contracted parts can be loosened and expanded by adding water, so that six casks of wine can be preserved in only one, and this one will require only as much space as those six, will not be tied up in so many expenses, and will not consume as much wine by evaporation as those six wine vessels that must always be refilled. There is also this significant benefit, that from such contracted juices, if they are at hand, at the onset of any autumn, new wines can be made and sold at a higher price four, six, eight, or more weeks sooner than in the autumn season itself, when the grapes have ripened and new wine is available to everyone.

NB. But for such work, a certain peculiar and artificial instrument is required, by whose benefit the musts are aided so that they may ferment quickly. There are also other advantages that proceed from these musts thus reduced, as it were, into a center,