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298 he loved it. No doubt he was full of his subject, and the spirit moved him to pour forth this panegyric, which it might have puzzled any body except Stanihurst to translate. Stanihurst himself, in thus expatiating upon "the commodities of aqua vitæ," seems to have been no water-drinker. "Truly, (he adds,) it is a sovereign liquor, if it be orderly taken." The clerks of Ireland, according to old Higden, had a very orderly way of taking it,.. "they ben chaste, and sayen many prayers, and done great abstinence a-day, and drinketh all night ."

  A curious theory concerning the climate of the torrid zone, is to be found in the Problemas of Dr. Cardenas, published at Mexico, in 1591 "That climate, (he says,) is hot and moist, and were it not for the moisture the heat would 