of this salt, from which the sweet taste of milk arises, seems to belong to the Italians; for though Haller says, that he read in Kempfer, that the Brachmans knew how to prepare sugar from milk, he was not able to quote the place where this is mentioned, and I have hitherto sought for it in vain. If this testimony be inadmissible, till the place where it occurs be again found, the Italian Bartoletti, as far as I know at present, is the first person by whom this salt was mentioned, in a work entitled Encyclopædia Hermetico-dogmatica, which, as Mazzuchelli says, was printed in quarto, at Bologna, in 1615 and 1619. This Fabrizio Bartoletti, or Bertoletti, was born in 1586, and after being professor at Bologna and Mantua died in 1630. Merklin, Jöcher in his Dictionary of learned men, and others, make the year of his birth to be 1588; but this is an error. He, however, named this salt, not sugar of milk, but manna seu nitrum seri lactis. I do not believe that he gave himself out as the inventor of it; at any rate Peitonti, where he enumerates his services, takes no

• Boerhavii prælectiones acad. tom. v. P. ii. p. 430. Elementa physiol. vii. 2. p. 38: Hoc salis genus etiam Brachmanes, ut ex aliis dulcibus, ita ex lacte norunt parare. Hoc in adversariis meis ex Kæmpfero citavi; locum non adjeci.

↑ A circumstantial account of the life and writings of this Italian may be found in the 21st part of Opuscoli scientifici e filolog. which contains, p. 393. Paitoni commentarius de vita et scriptis Fabricii Bartholetti. His life may be found also in Mazzuchelli scrittori d'Italia, ii. 1. p. 429.

notice of it. Spielman* and others say that Ettmüller gave Bartoletti's recipe for preparing this salt from the above-mentioned book. But in that edition of Ettmüller's work which I quoted in the first volume of this History of Inventions, I find only the following passage: Serum lactis habet in se sal volatile nitrosum; unde Bartholetus præparat ex sero lactis remedium, quod vocat mannam seu nitrum seri lactis. Suavis est saporis, cujus uncia una largius operatur quam mannæ vulgaris unciæ tres. The recipe, however, must be in the older editions; for it was thence copied into an academic Dissertation, de saccharo lactis in 1713; and as I have not yet seen Bartoletti's book, I shall here give the recipe taken from it, as being the first ever publicly made known. Destillatur in MBneo calore leni serum lactis, donec in fundo butyracea fex subsideat, cui adhaerebit, et quasi superinstrata erit salina quaedam substantia subalbida quae curiose separat; est enim sal seri essentiale, seu eius nitrum cuius caussa serum nitrosum dicitur, et huic tota alterandi et abstergendi vim seri inest. Solvit hanc substantiam separatam in aqua appropriata et coagulat, opus repetit, donec seri cremorem habeat, sapore omnino mannam referentem. It is, however, singu

Institut. chemiæ. p. 71: Ettmüller in Collegio pharmaceutico in Schröderum, sub titulo bovis, Op. i. p. 770.

+ Page 204.

In Encyclop. 400.

lar that Haller could not find this unintelligible recipe in his edition of Bartoletti.*

The person, however, who chiefly contributed to make this salt known was the Italian Ludovico Testi, who gave it out as an invention of his own, and recommended and sold it as a powerful medicine for the gout and other diseases, but on that account concealed the method of preparation. This Testi, whose father is said to have possessed various chemical secrets, was a native of Reggio, and practised with great success as a physician at Venice, where he died on the 3d of September 1707, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. A short time before his death he requested the well known Vallisneri, his friend and countryman, to publish his book de praestantia lactis, as a work in which he had described the preparation of his celebrated medicine.† From this manuscript, therefore, Vallisneri made the prescription known: it differs a little from the common process, and on that account he chose to call Testi's salt, il sale di sero dolcificato, rather than sugar of milk. ‡

In modern times the sugar of milk is made chiefly in Swisserland. Creuz a physician, and

Haller says, in the place quoted: Mea editio Encyclopædiæ neque eum locum habet neque tot paginas. The recipe, as Ettmüller says, ought to stand in p 400.

+ Giornale de' letterati d'Italia, 1715. p. 129.

The Latin prescription of Testi may be found in Ephemerides naturæ curiosorum, cent. 3. p. 69. The Italian translation stands in

an apothecary of Bern named Prince, for a long time prepared this salt, and carried on with it a very great trade. The latter, in particular, found an extensive sale for his article in France; but it decreased when this salt, of a quality equally good, began to be manufactured in Lorraine, and particularly at Sarlouis.* At present, however, it is made no where but in the canton of Bern, from which it may be obtained in casks weighing several hundred pounds.†

It is prepared from new milk by boiling it with eggs, and when an imperfect separation of the milk is effected, straining it; then boiling it, and suffering it to crystallize, This sugar therefore is fatter, and more liable to spoil, than that given by milk from which the butyraceous and caseous parts have been carefully separated.‡

GUNS. GUN-LOCKS.

THE first portable fire-arms were discharged by means of a match, which in the course of time was fastened to a cock, for the greater security of the hand while shooting. Afterwards a fire-stone was

L'art de distillateur d'eaux-fortes. Par Demachy, 1773. fol.

p. 128. + Andrea Briefe aus der Schweitz. Zurich 1776. 4to. p. 307. G. R. C. Storr Alpenreise. Leipsic 1784. 4to. i. p. xxxii.

screwed into the cock, and a steel plate or small wheel, which could be cocked or wound up by a particular kind of key, was applied to the barrel. This fire-stone was not at first of a vitreous nature, like that used at present for striking fire, but a compact pyrites or marcasite, which was long distinguished by that name. But as an instrument of this kind often missed fire, a match, till a late period, was retained along with the wheel; and it was not till a considerable time after that men, instead of a friable pyrites, so much exposed to effloresce, affixed a vitreous stone to the improved cock or present lock. On each new improvement, the piece, the caliber and length of which were sometimes enlarged and sometimes lessened, obtained various new names; such, for example, as Büchse, Hakenbüchse, Arquebuse; Musket, Pistol, flinte, &c. But I shall leave it to those who are able to write a history of artillery, to determine the difference between these kinds; and shall here add only what follows.

The first name undoubtedly arose from the oldest portable kind of fire-arms having some similarity to a box. There were long and short büchse, the latter of which, as Hortleder says, were peculiar to the cavalry. The long kind also, on account of their similarity to a pipe, were called rohr. Large pieces, which were conveyed on cars or carriages, were called Karrenbüchse, but soon