373

posed to have had an appointment of a hundred shillings ayear, by way of salary or stipend. Chaucer was Poet Lau-reat to Richard II, . and the first who obtained the grant of anannual allowance of wine. We read of persons under thesame title in the reign of Edward IV. , Henry VII. and VIII.,and of James I. , who in 1615, granted to his Laureat anannual pension of 100 marks. In the year 1630, this pen-sion was augmented, by letters patent of Charles I. , to £ 100a year, with an additional grant of one terse of Canary wine,to be taken out of the King’s store of wines yearly.

LEAD. At a very early period plates of lead were madeuse of, for the purpose of transmitting to posterity such max-ims and regulations as were deemed worthy of preservation.Leaden pipes for the conveyance of water, and the methodof soldering them with tin, as also fixing iron in stone bymelted lead, is noticed by Vitruvius . Leaden gutters, andwooden roofs covered with sheets of lead, were common inthe middle ages.

Sugar of lead, or litharge, is noticed by Dioscorides andothers; Peracelsus, who died in 1541, recommended it assalutary in several disorders. The adulteration of wine bylitharge, is said to have originated in France , and is prohi-bited in a French ordinance of 1696.

LEAF . Agostens Manderola, an Italian monk, first at-tempted to produce trees merely from the leaf, an account ofwhich he gives in his book on gardening, published in 1652 ;wherein he states that he had produced trees from the leavesof the cedar and lemon tree; this method was afterwardspractised with success, by Baron Munchausen , at Swobber,on the Limon a Rivo and other plants.

The art of reducing leaves to skeletons by freeing themof their soft and pulpy substance, in such a manner as toleave only their internal and harder vessels, was first attempt-