“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 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 and ditches, and the dirty salts mixed with sand are again lixiviated, and the filtered liquid is boiled down in curiously formed pans or boilers.