The manufacture of ale or beer is of very high antiquity. Herodotus ascribes the inven tion of brewing to Isis, and tells us that the Egyptians drank a liquor which they called zuthos, fermented from barley. Ale or beer was never used to a great extent in Greece or Italy, partly owing, no doubt, to the abundance of wine in these countries. Xenophon, in his (Anabasis,' mentions it as being used among the inhabitants of Armenia, and the Gauls were also acquainted with it in early times. Ale or beer was in common use in Germany in the time of Tacitus. the nations," says Pliny, inhabit the west of Europe have a liquor with which they intoxicate themselves, made of corn and water (fruge madida). The manner of making this liquor is somewhat different in Gaul, Spain and other countries, and it is called by many various names; but its nature and properties are everywhere the same. The peo ple of Spain, in particular, brew this liquor so well that it will keep good for a long time. So exquisite is the ingenuity of mankind in grati fying their vicious appetites that they have thus invented a method to make water itself intox icate?' Our Teutonic ancestors would of course bring with them from the Continent their na tional beveragend accordingly we find ale E mentioned in English history in very early times. It is mentioned in the laws of Ina, King
of Wessex (680), and ale-booths were regu lated by law in 728. It was customary in the reigns of the Norman princes to regulate the price of ale, and a statute passed in 1272 en acted that a brewer should be allowed to sell two gallons of ale for a penny in cities, and three or four gallons for the same price in the country. The use of hops in the manufacture of ale and beer seems to have been a German invention, and the name beer appears to have come from Germany to England with this practice (1524) after which and *ale" were used respectively for the hopped and the unhopped liquor. In 1552 hop plantations had begun to be formed in England. Ale-houses were first licensed in 1621, and in Charles II's reign duties amounting to 2s. 6d. a barrel on strong, and to 6d. on small ale or beer, were imposed for the first time (1660). From that time up to 1830, when it was entirely repealed, though the malt-tax remained, the duty on the barrel of strong beer varied, being in 1804 as high as 10s. Up to 1823 beer was classed into strong beer and small beer, the former being beer of the value of 16s. and upward the bar rel, the latter beer below this value. See also BREWING.