Boundaries.

Brecon- BRECONSHIRE, or BRECKNOCKSHIRE, in shire. South Wales, is divided from Radnorshire by the river Wye; its other boundaries are artificial. Its length is 29 miles, the breadth of its southern basis 34, and its circumference rather more than 100. Extent. It contains nearly 500,000 acres of land, not onehalf of which are either in a state of cultivation, or adapted to it. Its form is irregularly triangular, narrowing towards the northern extremity. It is diDivisions. vided into six hundreds; and contains the county town, Brecon, and three market-towns besides, Crickhowel, Biulth, and Hay. There are in it one hundred and eleven parishes, and places paying parochial rates, according to the last returns to Parliament respecting these rates.

Face of the Country and Soil.

Agrical

ture.

Breconshire is one of the most mountainous counties in Wales; and the Van, or Brecknock Beacon, is one of the loftiest mountains. Ridges of hills which form the separation of this from most of the adjacent counties, shelter it in such a manner as to render it temperate. It appears from observations made in the year 1802, with a rain guage, that 26 inches of rain fell at Brecon. There is a considerable variation, not only in the surface of the country, but also in the nature of the strata. In the hundered of Biulth, the soil is remarkably argillaceous, and the water does not sink sufficiently deep; in the Vale of Usk, on the contrary, it is too porous to retain the necessary moisture. In general, the soil of the vales consists of a light loam, lying on a deep bed of gravel; the soil of the hills, for the most part, is argillaceous. The principal river, next to the boundary one of the Wye, is the Uske, which, taking its rise from the black mountain, in the western side of the county, on the border of Caermarthenshire, flows across it, through a fine valley, to the south eastern angle, passing the town of Brecon. A little to the east of the town of Brecon is a considerable lake, well stored with fish, out of which a rivulet runs to the Wye. The Brecon Canal unites with the Monmouth Canal eight miles and a half from Newport, and one mile from Pontypool; it crosses the river Avon, is carried through a tunnel 220 yards in length, passes the town of Abergavenny towards the river Uske, and proceeds parallel with that river to Brecon, being 33 miles in length, with 68 feet rise to Brecon. From the fall of this canal from Brecon to the Bristol Channel, it appears, that Brecon is 411 feet 8 inches above the level of the sea..

The agriculture of this county is superior to that of most of the other counties of Wales, and appears to have begun to improve about the middle of the last century, as the Breconshire Agricultural Society was instituted in 1775, being one of the first associations of the kind in the Island. The mode of culture on the good soils is conducted in the best manner; but where the land is naturally poor, the tillage is very bad. In the Vale of Uske, the Norfolk rotation is followed with skill and success; and tolerably abundant crops of barley, clover, wheat, and turnips are obtained. The Highland farmers, in general, are too poor to attempt any material improvements. In the vales the farms seldom exceed 150 or 200 acres; the rents are high; in the neighbourhood of Glazbury and Hay, nearly 40s. the cyfair,

which is about one-third less than the statute acre; Breconthe poorest grounds do not let for more than four shire. or five shillings the cyfair.

The principal exports of the county are wool, butter, and cheese; of the former, a considerable quantity is spun and knit into stockings in the hundred of Biulth, and in different parts of the Highlands; the stockings are bought by hosiers, and carried to the English market. Some sheep, a few horned cattle, and a considerable number of swine, are frequently driven to Worcester, London, Bristol, &c. The cattle and horses are small, but the former have been much improved by intermixing the Glamorganshire and Herefordshire breeds; and the latter by the introduction of the Suffolk Punch sort. A considerable number of otters frequent the rivers, the furs of which form another branch of the exports of this county.

The principal manufactures are flannel, linsey- Manufac woolsey, and other coarse cloths. These manufactures. tures are not so flourishing as they were formerly; as, from the latter end of the sixteenth, to the beginning of the eighteenth century, considerable fortunes were acquired in Brecon and its vicinity, by the manufacture of woollen cloths. At present, the workmen confine themselves, almost entirely, to weaving what is spun by private families, into what is called hannergive, raw cloth. Latterly, several forges and iron founderies have been established near the borders of Glamorganshire, which abound with coal and iron-ore; and these have succeeded extremely well. The profits of the mines for the year ending 5th April 1813, according to the returns under the Property Act, were L. 2254, and of iron works L. 1006.

The poor and other parochial rates of this county, Poor-rates. in the year ending Easter 1803, amounted to the sum of L. 12,200, 7s. 84d. In the year ending the 25th of March 1815, there was paid in parochial rates the sum of L. 20,307, 3s. 10d.

In the year 1801, the population amounted to Population. 31,633 inhabitants; of whom 14,346 were employed in agriculture, and 4204 in various trades and manufactures.

As this important art has been, in a great measure, overlooked in the Encyclopædia Britannica, and as nothing like a satisfactory account of it is to be found in any book on the subject, which we have seen, we consider it necessary for us to lay down the principles on which it depends, somewhat in detail. We shall, therefore, divide this article into five chapters. In the first, we shall take as short a view as possible of the History of the art; in the second, we shall give an account of the different kinds of Grain employed in Brewing; in the third, we shall treat of the process of Malting; in the fourth of Brewing; and in the fifth, we shall give an account of the nature and properties of the different kinds of ale and beer manufactured by the brewThe Explanation of the Plates will contain a description of the vessels used in a London porter brewery.

er.

CHAP. I.

HISTORY OF BREWING.

No notice is taken of beer or ale in the books of Moses, from which it is probable that they were unknown till after the death of this legislator. All the ancient Greek writers agree in assigning the honour of the discovery of beer to the Egyptians, whose country, being annually inundated by the Nile, was not adapted for the cultivation of vines. Herodotus, who wrote about 450 years before the commencement of the Christian era, informs us, that the Egyptians made their wine from barley, because they had no vines. Οινῳ δ' εκ κριθεων πεποιημένῳ διαχρεονται ου γαρ σφι εισι ἐν τῇ χωρῇ ἀμπελοι Herodoti, Lib. ii. c. 78. Pliny says that this liquid in Ægypt was called zythum (Plinii Hist. Nat. Lib. xxii. c. 25). The same name was given to it by the inhabitants of Galatia, who, according to Diodorus Siculus, were unable to cultivate grapes on account of the coldness of their climate. Beer was distinguished among the Greeks by a variety of names. It was called divov xgilivov (barley wine) from its vinous properties, and from the material employed in its formation. In Sophocles, and probably in other Greek writers, it is distinguished by the name of Bgurov. Dioscorides describes two kinds of beer, to one of which he gives the name of Ludov and to the other ougui ; but he gives us no description of either sufficient to enable us to distinguish them from each other. (Dioscorides, Lib. ii. c. 79 and 80.) Both, he informs us, were made from barley, and similar liquids were manufactured in Spain and Britain from wheat.

From Tacitus we learn, that, in his time, beer was the common drink of the Germans; and from his imperfect description of the process which they followed, it is not unlikely, or rather there can be no doubt, that they were acquainted with the method of converting barley into malt. "Potui humor ex hordeo aut frumento in quandam similitudinem vini

corruptus." (De Moribus German, c. 23.) Pliny Brewing. gives us some details respecting beer, though they are by no means satisfactory. He distinguishes it by the name of cerevisia or cervisia, the appellation by which it is always known in modern Latin books.

This liquid does not appear to have come into general use in Greece or Italy; but in Germany and Britain, and some other countries, it appears to have been the common drink of the inhabitants, at least as early as the time of Tacitus, and probably long before. It has continued in these countries ever since, and great quantities of beer are still manufactured in Germany, the Low Countries, and in Britain.

The first treatise published on the subject, as far as we know, was by Basil Valentine. This treatise, according to Boerhaave (for we ourselves have never had an opportunity of seeing it), is both accurate and elegant. In the year 1585, Thaddeus Hagecius ab Hayck, a Bohemian writer, published a treatise entitled De Cervisia ejusque conficiendi ratione, natura, viribus et facultatibus. This little treatise, consisting only of 50 pages, is written with great simplicity and perspicuity, and gives as accurate a description of the whole process of brewing as any treatise on the subject which we have seen. In the early part of the eighteenth century, Mr Combrune, who, we believe, was a practical London brewer, published a book entitled The Theory and Practice of Brewing. This book has gone through many editions, and we believe is still reckoned the stand. ard book on the subject. But the attempts made in it to give a rational theory of brewing are far from satisfactory. Nor can any stress be laid upon the experiments which it contains on the colour of malt, according to the temperature at which it is dried. The fact is, that malt may be rendered brown, or even black, by exposure to a very low heat; while it may be exposed to a very considerable tempera ture without losing its colour. The writer of this article has seen malt exposed on the kiln to a heat of 175° without losing its colour, or without losing the power of vegetating when put into the ground; and he has reason to believe that these properties would have remained unaltered had the temperature been raised still higher. It is not the degree of heat applied, but the rapidity with which it is raised, that darkens the colour of malt. If the heat, at first, does not exceed 100°, and if after the malt is dried as much as it can be at that temperature, the heat be raised to 120°, kept sometime at that temperature, and then raised gradually higher,—if we continue to proceed in this manner, the temperature of the kiln may be elevated at least to 175° without in the least discolouring the malt.

In the year 1784, Mr Richardson of Hull published his Theoretic Hints on Brewing Malt Liquors, and his Statical Estimates of the Materials of Brewing, showing the Use of the Saccharometer. These