The first thing to be attended to is the choice of good cocks; they should be perfectly new, well cut, and flexible; any having black spots on them should be rejected. When the wine runs clear, place a shallow tub under the tap of the cask, and take care that there are two or three small holes near the bung or in it, to allow the air an ingress, to supply the place of the wine withdrawn. All being ready, hold the bottle under the tap in a leaning position. Fill the bottle to within two inches of the top of the neck, so that when the cork comes in, there may remain three-quarters of an inch of space between the wine and the lower end of the cork. The corks should be dipped, not soaked, in wine, and should enter with difficulty; they are driven in with a wooden mallet. If the cork is to be waxed, it must be cut off to less than a quarter of an inch. Champagne bottles must have their corks driven about half way, and fixed down by a wire, this makes them easy to draw. While a cask of wine is bottling off, it is impossible to exclude the admission of air to the surface of the liquor, except some particular method is employed, and if the operation lasts some time, the wine is almost certain to be injured; the best prevention of this, is a bottle of fine olive oil, which, being poured into the cask and floating on the surface of the wine, totally excludes the air, and prevents acidity or mouldiness for a whole year. When the crust, or precipitation of wine in bottles, is deposited in excess, and is about to be removed, the wine should be decanted into fresh bottles, or the deposit may mix with and injure the wine. Wine to be fit for bottling must not only be separated from the gross lees, and have attained perfect clearness by the fining, but it must also remain a certain time in the cask to ripen; for this no precise rule can be laid down. Generally speaking, however, wine should not be bottled until it has lost its sharpness, and is no longer liable to fermentation. When wine is bottled too soon, it often ferments and remains always sharp; the best time to perform this operation is in the month of March or October, especially if the weather be fine and clear.