corks under him, his clothes being bound upon his head, and was fortunate enough to succeed in the attempt. The use of cork for stoppers was not entirely unknown to the Romans, and instances of its being thus employed may be seen in Cato's "De Re Rustica," cap. exx.; but its application to this purpose seems not to have been very common, or cork stoppers would have been oftener mentioned by authors who have written on agriculture and cookery, and also in the works of ancient poets. The convivial customs of those days had no connection with the bottle, glass bottles being of a much later invention. Instead of having dozens of sparkling champagne or hock, to be liberated from the bottle by the corkscrew, at their feasts, the guests filled their drinking-cups of gold, silver, crystal, or beech-wood from a two handled amphora, a kind of earthenware pitcher in which their choice wines used to be kept. The mouths of these vessels were stopped with wood, and covered with a mastic, composed of pitch, chalk, and oil, to prevent air spoiling the wine or evaporation taking place. Columella, who wrote one of the earliest works on agriculture, gives directions for preparing this cement. Pliny, in describing the cork-tree, says it is smaller than the oak, and its acorns of the very worst quality. He tells us the cork-tree did not grow throughout Italy, and in no part whatever of Gaul. At the present day it is abundant in France, and Fee states that the acorns of Quercus suber are of an agreeable flavor, and the hams of Bayonne are said to owe their high reputation from the pigs having fed on the acorns of the cork-tree. Some ancient authors speak of the cork-tree as the female of the holm-oak (Quercus ilex), and in countries where the holm does not grow, they used to substitute the wood of the cork tree.
Traditional Origin of Social Distinctions.—In the latter part of the fourteenth century social distinctions became the subject of theological controversy in England—the Lollards, a religious association including large numbers of the common people, maintaining the natural equality of man; while the Roman Catholic preachers, on the other hand, encouraged the belief that the division of society into distinct classes was a permanent judgment of God, the origin of which, according to Alexander Barclay, a poetical writer in the reign of Henry VII., they thus accounted for: "One day, while Adam was absent occupied with his agricultural labors, Eve sat at home on their threshold with all her children about her, when suddenly she became aware of the approach of the Creator, and ashamed of the great number of them, and fearful that her productiveness might be misinterpreted, she hurriedly concealed those which were the least well-favored; 'some of them she placed under hay, some under straw and chaff, some in the chimney, and some in a tub of draff; but such as were fair and well made she wisely and cunningly kept with her.' God told her that he had come to see her children that he might promote them in their different degrees, upon which she presented them in the order of their birth. God then ordained the eldest to be an emperor, the second to be a king, and the third a duke to guide an army; of the rest he made earls, lords, barons, squires, knights, and hardy champions; some he appointed to be 'judges, mayors, and governors, merchants, sheriffs and protectors, aldermen and burgesses.' While all this was going on. Eve began to think of her other children, and unwilling that they should lose their share of honors, she now produced them from their hiding-places. They appeared, with their hair rough and powdered with chaff, some full of straws, and some covered with cobwebs and dust, 'that anybody might be frightened at the sight of them.' They were black with dirt, ill-favored in countenance, and misshapen in stature, and God did not conceal his disgust. 'None,' he said, 'can make a vessel of silver out of an earthen pitcher or goodly silk out of a goat's fleece, or a bright sword of a cow's tail neither will I, though I can, make a noble gentleman out of a vile villain. You shall all be plowmen and tillers of the ground, to keep oxen and hogs, to dig and delve, and hedge and dike, and in this wise shall ye live in endless servitude. Even the townsmen shall laugh you to scorn; yet some of you shall be allowed to dwell in cities, and shall be admitted to such occupations
