The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-11-26
FIRST BOTTLES
SKINS STILL USED .ss " EARLIEST
 RECORDED TIMES.
One Centaining z4,O0O Gallons Seen at An Egyptian Coronation--vesseis
 of Clay . Development.

uGSe
 must be almost as old as wine itself
 for there certainly would have been livery little use in expressing the juice of the grape and allowing 1t to fermeni | unless there had been vessels of some
 sort to contain 1t. Even if stored in underground cisterns, as is still done in Southern Europe, bottles would be re- duired for carrying the liquid on jour-
 neys<or even for consuming it at home, Frequent mention Is made of such bot | ties in ancient literature. As a feast
 in the liquid in the Iliad the servants are described as bearing wine upon their shoulders in a bottie of goats kin from which the goblets of the guests were filled.
 wine Is still conveyed from place to place in bottles made of goat or pig skin Identical in every respect with the description given by Herodotus. It will doubtless be remembered that in the venta. on the Sierra Morena Don Qufxote's room was hung round with these curios. and that the doughty
 knight. mistaking them for the myr- mfdons of a'wicked enchanter, valiantly attacked them with his sword until the room was inch-deep In red wine flowing from the gashes made In the skins.
 Survive the Centuries.
 In Portugal and Greece these skin
 bags are also used for the conveyance
 of wine. as they are much more portable
 than any other sort of vessel. especial
 1y in a mountainous district. where
 they have to be borne by mules. These leathern bottles have a peculiar inter est. for in make and material they con- meet the viniculture of today with its origin in the unknown past. They are
 survivals which have f1oated down to L "A. -A A.-. Nr~- -A1 | centuries of age.
 A leathern bottle capable of holding
 an armed man would seem today too
 unwfeldy for practical purposes, but there is evidence that many of those
 used by the Romans were of still greater dimensions. Among the ruins of the ancient city of Pompeii a mural
 picture has been discovered represent ing an enormous skin bag on a wine cart which is being borne along by
 machine shaped like boat. Two men
 were drawing the wine of into ampho-
 rae. In order to gain popularity Ro-
 man politician would occasionally dole
 out wine wholesale to the clients whose
 favor he courted. and this picture prob ably portrays the conveyance on which the wine skin was borne through the streets and the men engaged in cir culating 1t.
 At Coronation of Ptolemy.
 The coronation ceremony of Ptole- my Philadelphus exce1led in pomp and pageantry every procession recorded Tn history, not even excepting the trium- phant progress with which Alexander the Great celebrated his escape from the deserts of Gedrosia. Perhaps the object of Philadelphus was so to dag gle his subjects that they should for get the domestic crimes with which he | inaugurated hAs ascent to the throne.
 The cost of the procession is estimated at over half million of American
 money. It lasted the whole day, being opened by the figure of the morning star and closed with that of Hesperus. Eighty thousand troops. cavalry and infantry. clad in gorgeous uniforms. marched past. Although the festival was held in winter. owing to the deli fresh grapes were provided on one of the great vehicles of the procession and a vintage scene faithfully represented To the sound of flute and song, sixty satyrs. under the superintendence of siienus. bearing his symbolic cantha-
 rus. trod out the grapes and flooded | the streets with foaming must
 Perhaps not the least appreciated part of the show was car 37 feet long by
 21 feet broad, bearing a gigantic utter made of leopard hides and containing 5000 amphokae of wine. As the Greek | amphora is equivalent to eight imper-
 ial gallons. the liquid contained in the | utter would have edualled the endr-
 nous quantity of 24.000 gallons. Wine for the Multitude.
 The sides must have been strengthen ed with some material stronger than
 leather to enable the skins to resist
 the pressure of such a weight of liquid.
 As the car moved along In the stately procession the wine was allowed slow | 1sr kA AA-. kAnk Il.
 multitude could fill their drinking ves-
 sells as 1t passed.
 The scolastic Latin term for a wine
 skin is utter, but the colloquial word
 used was butts, and thus a small skin
 was the diminutive buticula. From this
 buticula Is derived the word bottle
 and, with slight linguistic modification
 the same word has been adopted in all
 modern languages.
 | Although skins were never used for wine in England. even when grape
 juice was fermented there, the leather | bottle or blackjack was one of the ear Hest drinking vessels. It Is celebrated | in many old English ballads. and is not | an uncommon alehouse emblem at the present day. Some of these leather bot | ties were silver-lined. and were orna- | mented with silver bells. "to ring peals of drunkenness" as Becker says in his | English Villainies Seven Times Press
 ed to Death" When so ornamented
 thew are called "gyngie boyes"
 l Most of those in ordinary use were
 made in the shape of a/boot, which occasioned the French prisoners to re- port on their return to France that
 'the Englishmen used to drink out of
 their boots" | Used by n French King.
 They evidently took the fancy, how ever, of some of the French nobility
 for in the expenses of John. King of | France, when prisoner in England af- | ter the battle of Poictiers there is the l following entry: %'Pour deux bouteilles | de cuir achetees a Londres pour Mon
 seigneur Philippe. 9S 3d." no inconsid-
 erable price in those days. A. D. 1359- As the arts improved leather bot | ties were supplemented, but not dis placed. by veAels of clay, great care | being taken in the construction to avoid | sandy earth or any substance likely to
 he porous. These. like the hides part | ly to prevent the liquor from exud- | Ing. were all coated on the inside with pitch. but principally as an antiseptic | to keep the wine sound. These ves- | sells were called amphorae. and doubt | less held the standard gage of eight gallons, but as their use became limited
 to cellar storage their size gradually | Increased, until they attained frequent
 ly the capacity of 100 gallons and up ward The smaller afnphorae were made on the potter's wheel, but the larger In
 molds sunk in pits, where they were
 baked over furnaces. In many of the modern bodegas in Vladepenas wine Is still stored in similar earthenware yes