erati, who are together every day at dinner, or over their coffee after dinner, and every evening over their beer, become to them as their every-day clothing. I am not of those who deem this result well purchased at the price of the refining influence of the other sex, and the virtual breaking-up of family-life; but if some middle way could be hit upon to secure the two advantages at once, both science and society would be great gainers.
The government has regulated the manufacture of beer, and collected an income-tax upon it, for centuries past; and this is even now one of its most puzzling problems. It determines the price, both wholesale and retail, at which the beer may be sold. The calculations are based upon an estimate of the medium amount of fixed capital necessary for the manufacture, then the labor, then the average price of barley and hops at the October and November markets of each year; every item which enters into the manufacture, including interest at five per cent on capital, enters also into the government's calculation by which it determines its tax and the price of beer. The price is never increased or diminished by less than half a kreutzer, or two pfennigs, that is, one-third of a cent, per mass. The fractional parts of this half-kreutzer which may appear in the calculation are divided by a fixed rule between the public and the brewer: that is, when the fraction is one-fourth of a kreutzer, or less, the brewer must drop it for the public benefit; when more, he may call it a half for his own benefit. The government tax is nearly one kreutzer per mass, making about six millions of florins. There is also in several places an additional local beer-tax, amounting to nearly two million florins more. The population of the kingdom is about five millions. A considerable portion of this population are wine-growing, and manufacture and drink but little beer. Ledlmayr, the largest brewer in Munich, made in the year 1856—the latest statistics published—one hundred and twenty-nine thousand eimers. Allowing three hundred working-days to the year, this would be four hundred and thirty eimers, or twenty-seven thousand five hundred and twenty masses, per day, and would pay to the government, at one kreutzer per mass, one hundred and eighty dollars of our money for each of these working-days, or fifty-four thousand dollars yearly. In a time of popular sensitiveness, there is nothing which the government could do that would be so likely to be followed by a revolutionary outbreak as to add a kreutzer to the price of the mass or quart of beer. This article is ranked in all police-regulations among the necessaries of life. The bakeries and beer-houses must remain open at those holiday-hours when all other shopkeepers, except the apothecaries, must close their shops.
The statistics already given have reference to the common beer; but, besides this, the brewers have permission to brew for certain short periods what are called the double beers, without paying a tax upon them. My statistics of the beer-drinking will, therefore, fall short of the truth, at least by this uncertain quantity. During the brief periods of the sale of the double beers, there is a great rush for them, relieving somewhat the monotony of the ordinary routine. The two principal kinds of double beer are the Bock-beer and the Salvator-beer. The latter creates quite a furor. Many, led by curiosity to the head-quarters of its sale, find their amusement there in testing the capacity of some great beer-drinker,—and such are always on hand waiting the chance,—by paying for all he will drink. These curious visitors seldom return without a similar test of their own capacities; and as the article has double the alcohol of the common beer, many a one staggers a little on his homeward way who had never felt such effect from the common form of the beverage.
There is also no small amount of wine drunk in Munich. I have not the statistics, but the number of large houses with the sign, "Weinhandlung," and of the smaller ones with the sign, "Wein-
