ALCOHOL IN NATURE by Alice M. Guernsey

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 29, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 29.

ALCOHOL IN NATURE.

By Alice M. Guernsey

“Does alcohol exist in nature?” is a question that we have steadily answered in the negative, claiming that it is always the product of fermentation. In the face of this oft-repeated assertion, one of our juvenile workers was met by a startling quotation from a book entitled “Sea and Land: an Illustrated History of the Wonderful and Curious Things of Nature Existing Before and Since the Deluge.” The extract reads as follows: “The wine-tree, found in Mauritius Island, is only more wonderful than the pitcher-plant in that it distills an excellent quality of wine instead of water, corresponding to old Concord. The natives are exceedingly fond of this natural intoxicant, and abuse its use like wine-bibbers throughout the world; but it is said that its effects are not so pernicious on the system as fermented wine.”

“Can this be true?” is the question that came to the W. T. P. A. editorial rooms. Of course we said, “We don’t believe it,” but that was not enough in the face of the written evidence. So the quotation was sent to our good friend, Mr. Wm. T. Hornaday, author of “Free Rum on the Congo,” who is connected with the Smithsonian Institution, with the request that he would investigate the matter. He turned the question over to Prof. F. H. Knowlton, Assistant Curator of Botany in the National Museum, and the writer of the botanical definitions for the new “Century Dictionary.”

Professor Knowlton replies as follows: “So far as I know, and my knowledge of authentic sources that would be likely to mention a fact of this kind is fairly extensive, from my dictionary work, there is no plant that produces free alcohol as a normal sap. There are, as it is of course well known, many plants that produce violently intoxicating juices after fermentation. The wine-palm of New Granada is a well-known example. The natives cut it down, ‘scoop’ out a part of the inside, and in three days it is filled with a ‘toddy’ upon which they become intoxicated. It is only the sap, but in three days it has had ample time to ferment, and it cannot, therefore, be called a natural alcohol. Numerous other instances might be enumerated, but the evidence all goes to show that the juice has been fermented.

“I never heard of the wine-tree. From the title of the book in which it occurs, the publishers and all, I should put very little dependence in any of its statements that I did not know to be authentic. Should expect to find it stated that swallows hibernate in mud at the bottom of ponds and lakes, and that migrating birds visit the moon, in a book like that. I may do it injustice, however.”

If there is any higher authority to be produced we do not know of it, and it is certainly safe to leave to the writer of a book that takes into its small compass the whole history of the world, the producing of evidence to prove our ablest botanical investigators in the wrong. —Alice M. Guernsey, in Union Signal.