London granted him the freedom of the city in an appropriate manner. The Company of Fishmongers enrolled him as one of their body-a honour to him of greater value, as that company have for the past century been strenuous supporters of liberal principles and the rights of the people. The cities of Glocester, Monmouth, Nottingham, Berwick, and others, have presented Mr. Hume with their freedom. Addresses and votes of thanks from many of the counties of England have expressed the public opinion of Mr. Hume's services. His constituents in Montrose, Brechin, Arbroath, and Aberdeen, have presented him with pieces of plate to record their approbation of his conduct: and his late conduct in declining the presents of plate from the operatives at Glasgow, Leeds, Sheffield, and many other places, are strong proofs of the opinion these bodies hold of Mr. Hume's character. It is too long a catalogue here to record all the public testimonies which Mr. Hume has received from a grateful country; but among the testimonies which he has received of the esteem in which he is held by his countrymen, we must not omit to mention his election in 1824, and re-election in 1825, to the office of Lord Rector of the University and Marischal College of Aberdeen; because it affords an illustration of the mode in which every opportunity of interfering to a useful purpose is seized by his indefatigable spirit of improvement. His proceedings as Lord Rector promise to lead not only to most important advantages to the University which raised him to that honour, but to the state of education in Scotland at large. If we are asked what are the chances that Mr. Hume will continue hereafter in the same useful line of action in which he has heretofore appeared, and that he will not yield to those temptations which are apt to assail every man who becomes to a certain degree a man of consequence?-we answer, that though it is impossible to do more than form a probable conjecture respecting the future conduct of any individual, it is not easy to conceive a man in respect to whom the improbability of his altering his course may be more strongly affirmed. Mr. Hume is not a man whose habits are of a slight and transient nature. They are strong, and rooted, and govern the man. Of these habits, industry and good economy, the hatred of waste, in every shape, and in every quarter, are among the most conspicuous. Mr. Hume has greater pleasure in preventing waste, than other people in making it. There is every reason, therefore, to conclude, that he will go on preventing it. In the next place, there is no man living to whom it would be more difficult for ministers to find any thing to offer, which would operate upon him as a bribe. Any greater riches than he already possesses, would to him be absolutely useless. The mode of living which he now adopts, handsome on the scale of a moderate fortune, is such as his taste, his opinions, and his habits, would prevent him from altering if he were ten times as rich. Titles and ribbons to a man of his feelings are devoid of attraction; and as for power and place, his ambition is far more intensely gratified by the space which he occupies in the eye of his country, and the power to be useful-the best of all powers-which he already commands. Without assuming for Mr. Hume more of virtue than belongs to the average of other men, we may affirm that there is in his tastes, his habits, his very likings and dislikings, a security for incorruptibility, which nothing but the highest virtue can exceed. MECHANICS' MAGAZINE, CONDUCTED BY A Committee of Civil Engineers and Practical Mechanics. "Knowledge matures the judgment, polishes the character, and refines the heart." DISTILLATION FROM POTATOES. To JEAN JACQUES SAINTMARC, of Belmont Distillery, Wandsworth Road, Vauxhall, in the Parish of Saint Mary, Lambeth, in the county of Surrey, Distiller, in consequence of Communications made to him by certain Foreigners residing abroad, and discoveries by himself, for the Invention of Improvements in the Process of, and Apparatus for, Distilling from Potatoes. [Sealed 20th March, 1824.] THE intention of the patentee is to distil alcohol from potatoes, and the subject of his improvement is described under two heads: viz. the mode of preparing the potatoes, ready to be converted into wash, and the general arrangement of the apparatus, for conducting the fermentation and distillation, so as to retain the natural flavour of the spirit, and at the same time economise the use of fuel. It is first proposed to wash the potatoes free from the earth which adheres to their skins, by placing them in a rotatory drum, formed by open rails or staves, which drum is immersed in a trough or other vessel filled with water. When thus cleaned, the potatoes are to be introduced into a mill, for the purpose of being ground to a pulp. The construction of the mill to be employed is rather peculiar; it consists of a box, as usual, containing a cylinder having ribs of iron st. into the periphery of the cylinder, which ribs are to be notched, or formed on the outside into teeth like fine saws. Two pieces of wood at right angles, the one standing in a perpendicular, the other in a horizontal direction, are to be brought up against the cylinder on one side, and the potatoes introduced from a hopper above, are let fall between the cylinder and the wood, when, by the rotation of the cylinder, at the rate of about four hundred revolutions per minute, the potatoes become ground to a pulp, which descends into a receptacle below, there being a wooden scraper behind the cylinder, in order to prevent the pulp from adhering. The perpendicular piece of wood is made to give way by means of a spring behind it, for the purpose of allowing the larger potatoes to come in contact with the cutting cylinder, and the horizontal piece of wood is adapted with screws, in order to keep it up constantly against the cylinder which wears away the wood as it revolves. The pulp of the potatoes thus produced in the mill, is now to be mixed with a considerable quantity of water, sufficient to bring it into a liquid state; it is then strained through a sieve, and such portions of the potatoe as will not pass through the sieve are rejected as useless, and set apart for feeding animals. The liquor thus strained, is then to be poured into a sort of cullender or vessel having many holes, which vessel is lined with a cloth; and here the pulp is allowed to settle, and the water to drain away, leaving the substance of the potatoe in a cake at bottom. cake is then laid out upon a plaster floor, that its moisture may be drawn out by absorption, and afterwards it is dried in a kiln, where it may be kept perfectly good for a very great length of time. This In commencing the process of distillation from the prepared potatoes, the cake must be first broken and dissolved, by mixing with hot water till it has assumed the consistency of cream. A quantity of this liquor is then placed in a vat, which may be supposed to be situated as shown at a, fig. 1. This figure shows the whole range of apparatus in action, from the vat, a, in which the pulp is first introduced previous to fermentation, down to the worm where the distilled spirit is ultimately condensed. Let the quantity of potatoe pulp introduced into the vat, a, be equal to about three hundred weight when in a dry state, but mixed in the vat with hot water, to about the consistency of cream, as before mentioned; let there be water poured into the vessel, b, until it rises about six inches from the bottom, and into this water introduce twenty pounds of sulphuric acid, observing that the vessel, b, should have a lining of lead, to prevent the action of the acid upon the wood. The cock of the vat, a, is now to be opened, and the liquor contained therein, allowed to flow into the vat, b, which is called the decomposing vessel. Another portion of the potatoe pulp may then be mixed in the vat, a, and let off into the vat, b, as before; and so on until the vat, b, is sufficiently full. The proportion of acid to the pulp, necessary for decomposing it, should be from two to three pounds of the former, to every hundred weight of the latter. Steam is now to be sent into the vat, b, through the pipe, c, from a boiler, and by means of this steam, the liquor in b, is made to boil, and is to be kept boiling for four or five hours. The steam which evaporates from the vat, b, is allowed to pass up a worm pipe in the tub, d, which, by that means, heats the water in the tub, so that none of the heat is lost, and hot water may then be drawn from the tub, through a pipe, to supply the vat, a. After the boiling in the decom posing vessel is complete, the liquor is let off into the third vat, e, which is called the saturating ves or sel. During the time that the liquor is flowing into this vessel, a quantity of lime and water, chalk and water, is introduced in order to neutralize the sulphuric acid; two or three pounds of chalk is generally sufficient for one of acid, but the introduction of the chalk, or lime, must be continued as long as any effervescence arises from the liquor. When the liquor has subsided in the saturating vessel, it is to be drawn off into the fermenting vat, f, where a quantity of yeast is added to promote the fermentation. The temperature of this vessel is to be kept up to about ninety or one hundred degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer, and the room in which the operation is going on to eighty or eighty-five degrees, during the whole time of its fermenting, which usually takes fifteen or twenty days. To facilitate the fermentation, hydrogen gas is proposed to be injected into the liquor, by means of a force pump, through the pipe, g, which has a number of small holes in the lower part of the pipe, branches from which are coiled about the bottom; but this injection need not be made when the carbonic acid gas, which escapes, contains an excess of hydrogen. This mode of introducing hydrogen into the wash, may be advantageously employed to facilitate fermentation, whenever liquor is intended for distillation. The sediment of the vat, e, should be stirred up, to prevent the loss of any saccharine matter, and allowed to run into the fermenting vat. When the process of fermentation is complete, the liquor is to be run from the vat, f, into the still, h, through the pipe, i, and is then to be operated upon in the usual way. |