Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/263

Rh y i N v i o 241 whereby it is cleared from mucilaginous matter and the last traces of alcohol are thoroughly oxidized. Wine vinegar is made in France and other vine-cultivating countries from wine lees and inferior wines. The finest vinegar is yielded by white wines, the product being purer, pleasanter, and generally stronger than ordinary malt vinegar. Vinegar is also largely prepared from beet root, from the juice of other saccharine vegetables and fruits, and from sugar ; and indeed all sources of alcohol may be regarded as possible materials for making vinegar. Quick method vinegar is made, principally in Germany, from dilute spirit (about one of proof spirit to six of water), to which are added small proportions of sugar, honey, or malt extract. The standard liquor used by dif ferent manufacturers varies considerably. The process is also used to some extent in England for converting fermented and clarified malt wort into vinegar. Commercial vinegar varies much in strength. What is termed &quot;proof&quot; vinegar contains 4 - 6 percent of real acetic acid ; and, as it requires twenty-four grains of anhy drous carbonate of soda to neutralize each fluid ounce, it is also known as No. 24. In the same way weaker qualities are known as No. 22, No. 20, &c., these figures indicating the grains of car bonate of soda which neutralize a fluid ounce. Vinegar is extensively consumed in the preparation of pickles and sauces, and as a table condiment, especially with salad vege tables and fish. For many culinary purposes it is flavoured with aromatic herbs and spices. Aromatic vinegar, made from glacial acetic acid and perfumes, possesses a refreshing stimulating pun gency, as is familiarly known by its use in vinaigrettes. Marseilles vinegar, or thieves vinegar, is an aromatic preparation used as a prophylactic and masker of evil odours. Vinegar is also a men struum for several medicinal agents ; and in a concentrated con dition it is a valuable rubefacient and external stimulant. VINET, ALEXANDRE RODOLPHE (1797-1847), a French critic, though not a Frenchman, was born near Lausanne on 17th June 1797. He was educated for and duly entered the ministry of the Protestant Church, the date of his ordi nation being 1819. He had, however, already acquired an important position as teacher of the French language and literature in the gymnasium at Basel, and during the whole of his life he was more of a critic than of a theologian, though he exercised some influence in the latter capacity, headed a secession from the national church in Vaud, was for a time professor of theology at Lausanne, and advo cated an extreme toleration in the matter of religious formulas, together with the separation of church and state. As a theologian Vinet would already have been long for gotten, despite some sermons and treatises which had a certain vogue in his native country, and, being in part translated into English, exercised some influence on English- speaking adherents of Calvinism. His performances as a literary critic, which for the most part represent his aca demic lectures, are, however, of greater importance. By procuring for Sainte-Beuve an invitation to lecture at Lausanne on Port-Royal, he was the cause of one of the capital works of recent French literary history. But he had less indirect titles to fame in the same department than this. Like all other French writers of repute in Switzerland, he has been accused by French-born censors of that mysterious patavinity which is supposed to attach to Swiss French, and which has been illustrated in such a remarkable fashion by Rousseau, Benjamin Constant, Joseph and Xavier de Maistre, Topffer, and others. But the persons thus branded were probably content to write French as well as Livy wrote Latin. Vinet s Chrestomat/ue Franchise (1829), his Etudes sur la Litterature Franchise mi XIX eme Siecle and his Histoire de la Litterature Fran- mise au XVIII* me Siecle, together with his Etudes sur Pascal, fitudes sur les Moralistes des XVI eme ft XVIT eine Siecles, Histoire de la Predication pendant les Reformes, and other books gave evidence of a wide knowledge of litera ture, a sober and acute literary judgment, and a very con siderable faculty of appreciation. On the whole, he belongs to the academic school of critics rather than to the romantic- impressionist school, or to that rarer and better school than either which adjusts its theories to the work which is brought before it, and condemns nothing so long as it is good work according to the writer s own standard. He had considerable affinities with this last, and his work, having the singular advantage of being in some sort foreign criticism, without undergoing the disadvantage which attaches in French eyes to all criticism of French affairs written in a foreign language, has had a great in fluence on France. Vinet died on 15th May 1847 at Clarens (Vaud). A considerable part of his works was not printed till after his death. VINNITSA, a district-town of Russia, in the govern ment of Podolia, is situated on the Bug, 137 miles to the north-east of Kamenets-Podolsk, and 29 by rail from the Zhmerinka junction on the railway from Odessa to Lem- berg. It was founded in the 14th century, but nothing now remains of its two stone forts. Its old Jesuit college is now a gymnasium. Owing to the great fertility of the neighbourhood, there are a number of distilleries ; and the Vinnitsa merchants, mostly Jews, carry on trade in corn and spirits. The population in 1884 was 18,580. VIOL. See VIOLIX. VIOLET. The violets comprise a genus of at least one hundred, some say two hundred species, found principally in temperate regions of the northern hemisphere ; a few also occur in mountainous districts of South America, while the genus is not wholly without representatives in Australia. The species are mostly low-growing herbs with alternate leaves provided with large leafy stipules. The flowers are solitary, or rarely in pairs, at the end of slender axillary flower stalks. The flowers themselves are very irregular in form, with five sepals prolonged at the base, and five petals, the lowest one larger than the others and pro vided with a spur. The five anthers are remarkable for the petal-like processes which extend beyond the anther cells and form a sort of cone around the style. The ovary is superior, one-celled, with three parietal placentas and numerous ovules. It is surmounted by a single style, which terminates in a dilated or hook-like stigma. The fruit is a capsule bursting loculicidally, i.e., through the centre of each of the three valves. The irregular con struction of the flower is evidently connected with fertili zation by insect agency. To reach the honey in the spur of the flower (of the pansy), says Miiller, the insect must thrust its proboscis into the flower close under the globular head of the stigma. This lies in the anterior part of a groove fringed with hairs on the inferior petal. The anthers shed their pollen into this groove, either of them selves or when the pistil is shaken by the insertion of the bee s proboscis. The proboscis, passing down this groove to the spur, becomes dusted with pollen ; as it is drawn back, it presses up the lip-like valve (of the stigma) so that no pollen can enter the stigmatic chamber ; but as it enters the next flower it leaves some pollen on the upper surface of the valve, and thus cross-fertilization is effected. It is curious, however, that in the common violet, V. odorata and other species &quot; cleistogamic &quot; flowers occur of a greenish colour, so that they offer no attractions to insect visitors and their form is correspondingly regular. In such flowers self-fertilization is compulsory and very effectual, as seeds in profusion are produced. Several species of Viola arc native to Great Britain. V. odorata is highly prized for its fragrance, and in cultivation numerous varieties have originated. The garden pansies or heartseases are derivatives from V&quot;. tricolor, a cornfield weed, V. altaica, and V. (/raitdifloro: They are reputed to have been first raised about 1810 by Lady Mary Bennet, with the assistance of her gardener, Mr Richardson, the term pansy or pcnsec having been long attributed to V. tricolor. The variety and richness of colouring in these flowers are very remarkable. &quot; Bedding violas,&quot; which differ from pansies in some slight technical details, have been raised by crossing V. lutca with V. calcarata. The violas are credited with powerful emetic and diuretic properties, on which account they have been admitted into some of the pharmacopoeias ; but they are now very little used. XXIV. 31