Page:Completeconfectioner Glasse 1800.djvu/381

, there has always been seen swimming over the phlegms or faints, a soft and unctuous substance; and that substance is an oil. Now that oil is what is called essence when it is the object of our distillation.

By simple waters is meant what is distilled from flowers and other things without water, brandy, or spirit of wine. Such distillations are generally of a phlegmatic quality, though fragrant, always charged with the odour of the body from which it is extracted, and even of a more perfect fragrancy than the body itself.

Phlegms, which some call faints, are the terraqueous particles which make part of the composition of bodies; whether this principle be active or passive, we leave to the chymists to discuss. However it may be, it is nevertheless very essential for all artists of that profession to be well acquainted with its nature, for many are mistaken in it. Some take as phlegm certain white and cloudy drops which come first when the receipts contained in the still begin to run. Notwithstanding it is certain that these drops are often the most spirituous particles of the matters which distil, which they deprive themselves of very gradually. The whiteness of those cloudy drops is owing only to some moistness which remained in the top of the still; when if they had observed to wipe it off well, they should have seen that the first drip which runs would have been