68 N. n. STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



still menaces the entire destruction of the vineyards in 

 many of the best wine growing districts in the world, and, 

 consequently, great changes in the habitual occupations of 

 millions. Originating in an English hot-house about the 

 year 1845, it has spread over the whole of southern Europe, 

 including the Ionian islands and Greece, where it has al- 

 most wholly destroyed the crop of the small seedless grape 

 known in commerce and confectionery as the Zante currant, 

 and it is now advancing eastwards and northwards, pro- 

 ducing the ruin and too often the utter destitution and 

 starvation of thousands who have no resource but the 

 vineyard. Independently of this new disease, there had 

 been before a suspicion that the grape, as well as many 

 other domestic plants, was degenerating and destined to 

 final and not distant extinction. It has been said that the 

 clusters are smaller and less abundant than in earlier times, 

 and that vines planted within the present century have not 

 grown with the ancient luxuriance. There does not appear 

 to be any sufficient evidence in support of this belief, but it 

 would certainly be difficult to find vines of such dimensions 

 as are known to have formerly existed. The cathedral at 

 Eavenna had a great door composed of planks of vine 

 wood, thirteen feet long and fifteen inches wide, as the 

 skeptical may be easily convinced by examining the remains 

 of them still preserved in that building. They are said 

 to have been brought from Constantinople many centuries 

 since, and to have been taken from wild stocks growing 

 on the banks of tlie Ilion, the Phasis of the ancients, which 

 flows into the eastern end of tlic Euxine. The vine still 

 grows on the same river with greater luxuriance than in 

 any other known locality, but hardly attains the enormous 

 dimensions required to furnish such planks as 1 have de- 

 scribed. 



The olive and the orange, too, are suffering from epi- 

 demics somewhat resembling in their effects the grape- 

 disease ; but whether, like the latter, these maladies result 



