Bottle

a stone or glass receptacle for liquids. The ordinary bottle is made of molten glass which the glass maker blows into a mold. Bottles are of all shapes and sizes, from delicate vials no larger than the tip of a penholder to the magnum in which port wine is sent to market and the ten gallon carboy in which acids are transported. A bottle is presumed, however, to have a narrow neck and a mouth closed with a cork, rubber, or glass stopper. By a figure of speech a fleet is said to be bottled up when it is shut up in a harbor with a narrow entrance occupied by a superior force.

Glass bottles may not only be sealed readily so as to exclude air, but they are especially valuable from the fact that almost all substances may be kept in glass without dissolving and corroding the bottle in which they are kept. Wine may be kept in a glass bottle for hundreds of years without acquiring a taste such as would be imparted in time by a wooden or metal cask. In addition to the demand for domestic purposes and for the druggist American bottlers of wine, beer, whiskey, and mineral and aerated waters use $4,000,000 worth of bottles annually.

The bottle of the Scriptures, still used by the water carrier of the East, is made of leather, particularly the skin of a goat. In making, the skin is stripped off as nearly whole as possible. It is tanned and sewed up all but one leg, which serves as a neck. This is the waterbag still used by the caravan. "Men do not put new wine into old bottles," because new wine is likely to ferment and burst a sheepskin weakened by long service.

See Glass