96 THE VINE. 



of the blood of Jesus, which he shed for the salvation of mankind. "This 

 cup is the New Testament in my blood." — (I. Corinthians, xi.) 



That the ancients grew enormous grapes we have every proof in their 

 writings. So large were they that they appear almost beyond our conception: 

 we have nothing like them in our day. Strabo says that the Vines of Margiana 

 were so large that two men could scarcely compass them with their arms; 

 that the bunches of grapes they produced were a yard in length. Pliny men- 

 tions a Vine in his time that was six hundred years old; he also takes notice 

 of the successful cultivation of the Vine by that renowned Roman grammarian, 

 Rhemnius Palaemon, who gave six hundred thousand sesterces for a farm 

 within ten miles of Rome, and by his improved cultivation the produce of 

 his Vines in one year sold for four hundred thousand sesterces, and that the 

 people far and near ran in crowds to see the huge clusters of grapes. 

 Theophrastus mentions a Vine which grew so large that the statue of Jupiter 

 and the columns of Juno's temple were made of it. Columella says that 

 Seneca had a Vine which produced him yearly two thousand bunches. We 

 are also informed that a table of large dimensions, in the house of the Duke 

 of Montmorency, at Ecoan, is made from Vine planks; also that the cathedral 

 doors at Raveinna are made of Vine planks, some of them twelve feet long by 

 fifteen inches broad. Upon the coast of Barbary enormous Vines are found 

 growing; some of them are described as being eight, nine, and ten feet in 

 circumference. In Chios, now Scio, bunches of grapes are met with weighing 

 forty pounds. Virgil, alluding to these Vines, says,— 



"The ritual feast shall overflow with wine, 

 And Ohio's richest nectar shall he thine: 

 On the warm hearth, in winter's chilling hour 

 We'll sacrifice; at summer, in a bower." 



Nor has old England in days of yore been much behind- hand with its 

 variable climate in producing large Vines and bunches of grapes, for we find 

 that in 1781, His Grace the Duke of Portland made a present to the 

 Marquis of Rockingham of a bunch that grew in one of his vineries at 

 Welbeck, which weighed nineteen pounds and a half. It was carried suspended 

 upon a stafif the distance of twenty miles by four men. Again we find in 

 1821, that in the garden of the Hon. P. G. Howard, at Elford Hall, StaflFord- 

 shire, a bunch of a white grape was grown to the weight of fifteen pounds. 

 The parent of the now famous Vine at Hampton Court, at Valentine House, 

 Essex, ripened in 1819, two thousand bunches. And at one time the great 

 Vine at Northallerton, in Yorkshire, covered a space of one hundred and thirty- 

 seven square yards; the circumference of the stem above the ground was 

 three feet eleven inches. 



The native country of the Vine, like most other of our cultivated fruits, 

 is supposed to be Persia. Dr. Sickler has given a learned and curious 

 account of its migration to Egypt, Greece, and Sicily, to which we would 

 refer the curious reader. From Sicily it is generally supposed to have found 



