purchased extensive tea, coffee and cocoa plantations in Ceylon, and provided his own packing-house for hogs in Chicago, and fruit farms, jam factories, bakeries and bacon-curing establishments in England. In 1898 his business was converted into a limited liability company. At Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1897 he gave £20,000 for providing dinners for a large number of the London poor. In 1898 he was knighted, and in 1902 was made a baronet. In the world of yacht-racing he became well known from his repeated attempts to win the America Cup.
LIQUEURS, the general term applied to perfumed or flavoured potable spirits, sweetened by the addition of sugar. The term “liqueur” is also used for certain wines and unsweetened spirits of very superior quality, or remarkable for their bouquet, such as tokay or fine old brandy or whisky. The basis of all the “liqueurs” proper consists of (a) relatively strong alcohol or
spirit, which must be as pure and neutral as possible; (b) sugar or syrup; and (c) flavouring matters. There are three distinct main methods of manufacturing liqueurs. The first, by which
liqueurs of the highest class are prepared, is the “distillation”
or “alcoholate” process. This consists in macerating various
aromatic substances such as seeds, leaves, roots and barks of
plants, &c., with strong spirit and subsequently distilling the
infusion so obtained generally in the presence of a whole or a
part of the solid matter. The mixture of spirit, water and
flavouring matters which distils over is termed the “alcoholate.”
To this is added a solution of sugar or syrup, and frequently
colouring matter in the shape of harmless vegetable extracts or
burnt sugar, and a further quantity of flavouring matter in the
shape of essential oils or clear spirituous vegetable extracts.
The second method of making liqueurs is that known as the
“essence” process. It is employed, as a rule, for cheap and
inferior articles; the process resolving itself into the addition
of various essential oils, either natural or artificially prepared,
and of spirituous extracts to strong spirit, filtering and adding
the saccharine matter to the clear filtrate. The third method
of manufacturing liqueurs is the “infusion” process, in
which alcohol and sugar are added to various fresh fruit
juices. Liqueurs prepared by this method are frequently called
“cordials.” It has been suggested that “cordials” are articles
of home manufacture, and that liqueurs are necessarily of foreign
origin, but it is at least doubtful whether this is entirely correct.
The French, who excel in the preparation of liqueurs, grade their
products, according to their sweetness and alcoholic strength,
into crêmes, huiles or baumes, which have a thick, oily consistency;
and eaux, extraits or élixirs, which, being less sweetened,
are relatively limpid. Liqueurs are also classed, according to
their commercial quality and composition, as ordinaires, demi-fines,
fines and sur-fines. Certain liqueurs, containing only a
single flavouring ingredient, or having a prevailing flavour of a
particular substance, are named after that body, for instance,
crême de vanille, anisette, kümmel, crême de menthe, &c. On the
other hand, many well-known liqueurs are compounded of very
numerous aromatic principles. The nature and quantities of the
flavouring agents employed in the preparation of liqueurs of
this kind are kept strictly secret, but numerous “recipes” are
given in works dealing with this subject. Among the substances
frequently used as flavouring agents are aniseed, coriander,
fennel, wormwood, gentian, sassafras, amber, hyssop, mint,
thyme, angelica, citron, lemon and orange peel, peppermint,
cinnamon, cloves, iris, caraway, tea, coffee and so on. The
alcoholic strength of liqueurs ranges from close on 80% of
alcohol by volume in some kinds of absinthe, to 27% in anisette.
The liqueur industry is a very considerable one, there being in
France some 25,000 factories. Most of these are small, but
some 600,000 gallons are annually exported from France alone.
For absinthe, benedictine, chartreuse, curaçoa, kirsch and
vermouth see under separate headings. Among other well-known
trade liqueurs may be mentioned maraschino, which takes
its name from a variety of cherry—the marasca—grown in
Dalmatia, the centre of the trade being at Zara; kümmel, the
flavour of which is largely due to caraway seeds; allasch,
which is a rich variety of kümmel; and cherry and other “fruit”
brandies and whiskies, the latter being perhaps more properly
termed cordials.
See Duplais, La Fabrication des liqueurs; and Rocques, Les Eaux-de-vie et liqueurs.
LIQUIDAMBAR, Liquid Amber or Sweet Gum, a product of
Liquidambar styraciflua (order Hamamelideae), a deciduous
tree of from 80 to 140 ft. high, with a straight trunk 4 or 5 ft. in
diameter, a native of the United States, Mexico and Central
America. It bears palmately-lobed leaves, somewhat resembling
those of the maple, but larger. The male and female inflorescences
are on different branches of the same tree, the globular
heads of fruit resembling those of the plane. This species is
nearly allied to L. orientalis, a native of a very restricted portion
of the south-west coast of Asia Minor, where it forms forests.
The earliest record of the tree appears to be in a Spanish work by
F. Hernandez, published in 1651, in which he describes it as a
large tree producing a fragrant gum resembling liquid amber,
whence the name (Nov. Plant., &c., p. 56). In Ray’s Historia Plantarum (1686) it is called Styrax liquida. It was introduced
into Europe in 1681 by John Banister, the missionary collector
sent out by Bishop Compton, who planted it in the palace gardens
at Fulham. The wood is very compact and fine-grained—the
heart-wood being reddish, and, when cut into planks, marked
transversely with blackish belts. It is employed for veneering
in America. Being readily dyed black, it is sometimes used
instead of ebony for picture frames, balusters, &c.; but it is
too liable to decay for outdoor work.
The gum resin yielded by this tree has no special medicinal virtues, being inferior in therapeutic properties to many others of its class. Mixed with tobacco, the gum was used for smoking at the court of the Mexican emperors (Humboldt iv. 10). It has long been used in France as a perfume for gloves, &c. It is mainly produced in Mexico, little being obtained from trees growing in higher latitudes of North America, or in England.
LIQUIDATION (i.e. making “liquid” or clear), in law, the clearing off or settling of a debt. The word was more especially used in bankruptcy law to define the method by which, under the Bankruptcy Act 1869, the affairs of an insolvent debtor were arranged and a composition accepted by his creditors without actual bankruptcy. It was abolished by the Bankruptcy Act
1883 (see Bankruptcy). In a general sense, liquidation is used for the act of adjusting debts, as the Egyptian Law of Liquidation,
July 1880, for a general settlement of the liabilities of
Egypt. In company law, liquidation is the winding up and
dissolving a company. The winding up may be either voluntary
or compulsory, and an officer, termed a liquidator, is appointed,
who takes into his custody all the property of the company
and performs such duties as are necessary on its behalf (see
Company).
LIQUID GASES.[1] Though Lavoisier remarked that if the earth were removed to very cold regions of space, such as those of Jupiter or Saturn, its atmosphere, or at least a portion of its aeriform constituents, would return to the state of liquid (Œuvres, ii. 805), the history of the liquefaction of gases may be said to begin with the observation made by John Dalton in his essay “On the Force of Steam or Vapour from Water and various other Liquids” (1801): “There can scarcely be a doubt entertained respecting the reducibility of all elastic fluids of whatever kind into liquids; and we ought not to despair of effecting it in low temperatures and by strong pressures exerted on the unmixed gases.” It was not, however, till 1823 that the question was investigated by systematic experiment. In that year Faraday, at the suggestion of Sir Humphry Davy, exposed hydrate of chlorine to heat under pressure in the laboratories of the Royal Institution. He placed the substance at the end of one arm of a bent glass tube, which was then hermetically sealed, and decomposing it by heating to 100° F., he saw a yellow liquid distil to the end of the other arm. This liquid he surmised to be chlorine separated from the water by the heat and “condensed into a dry fluid by the mere pressure of its own abundant vapour,” and he verified his surmise by compressing chlorine gas, freed
- ↑ Figs. 1, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13 in this article are from Proc. Roy. Inst., by permission.
