SOCIETY OF CENTRAL ILLINOIS. 313 



oentegrade system, without redaction, we fiiul that at Montpelier, iu 

 in France, which he considers the center of the region most favor- 

 able to grape culture, this sum amounts to 55,900; at Palermo it is 

 55,000; in Algeria, 63,000. Another is about the extreme limit at 

 which the vine will thrive. If we carry the comparison in the 

 other direction, it appears that when the sum falls to 50,000 the vine 

 should be protected, while below 45,000 ordinary protection is of no 

 avail. 



The vegetable physiologists have told us that moisture must ac- 

 company heat in the promotion of the vegetative activity of all 

 plants; but meteorology has never shown any fixed relation between 

 it and the good and bad years for grapes and wine. Levy's efforts to 

 find such relation gave negative results. That the health of the vine 

 will suffer if the supplies of moisture be excessive and more than is 

 suited to its needs, is evident to every one who has had any experi- 

 ence in its culture, and rainy days and moist atmosphere have always 

 been a fruitful source of causes for debility of the vine and the many 

 diseases which attack it, and thus often used as a cloak to cover the 

 neglect and nial-nutrition to which it is too frequently subject. To 

 attempt to give any exact figures for the quantity of moisture avail- 

 able (luring the season to be most favorable to the vine, would be al- 

 most an useless task, as useless, for the present at least, as it would 

 be difficult. But, perhaps, the time will come when this may be 

 worked out and when the results obtained may be applied with profit 

 iu the location of this culture. Many of the most important data 

 are still to be collected in this country, and it is greatly to be hoped 

 that the combined attention of meteorologists and horticulturists 

 mav be turned to the value of this orgeat l)ranch of their work. 



Scarcely an authority will speak of this branch of the subject with- 

 out calling attention to the importance of fogs, dews and frosts in con- 

 nection with vine culture, and it is only within later years that any 

 special attention has been devoted to these conditions in the obser- 

 servatious of meteorologists. But while the meteorologists on their 

 side are establishing records of these conditions, the vine growers are 

 scarcely doing full duty on their side. A careful record of the ap- 

 pearance and disuiipcarance of mildew and blight to be compared af- 

 ter a series of years with the records simultaneously made of condi- 

 tions of rainfall, fogs, dews and frosts, will carry us far ahead in the 

 progress toward the solution of the vexed (juestions surrounding 

 these phenomena. Men of too high standing in the horticultural 

 world ascribe to them the causes of the many Ijaneful diseases which 

 affect the vine and its fruit, to make their opinions unworthy of con- 

 sideration, and exact observations should undoubtedly be instituted 

 to determine, either atfirnuitively or negatively, the accuracy of their 

 views. Such observations, especially with reference to fogs and 

 dews, have never been made in Europe, because necessity for them 

 seems never to have occurred. With frosts, however, the case has 



