276 



JOUBHAL OF HOETICULTURS AND COTTAGE GARDENEE. 



[ October S, 18S5. 



perieneed, and my Grapes will fall into tlie pannier, ripe and 

 gushing, to become speedily transformed into bruised unsightly 

 must, and undergo those subtle changes so anxiously watched, 

 in order to become an exhiliratiug beverage. There is an 

 adage which says, " They are clothed who lire in sunshine, 

 rich enough if the Grapes but grow." Perhaps that is the aim 

 of the English company we read of in the " Daily Telegraph," 

 August 12th, which has " just purchased for teu years the 

 produce of the famous vineyard near Bordeaux called Chateau 

 Margaux. National prejudice accuses the proprietors of a 

 ■want of patriotism, since, it is said, the French will now be 

 obUged to purchase their wine in England. There will, how- 

 ever, be no need of that. The wine-makers in the south are 

 clever enough to find out some means of giving the real ' bou- 

 quet ' of claret to ordinary wines. In fact, that is already 

 done. Accorchng to the Customs returns of the Zollverein, no 

 less than 4,500,000 bottles of Bordeaux of first-rate quality 

 have been imported into the treaty States. Now, I should 

 like to know how much claret is drunk in France if that be 

 true, since all the slopes of the Gironde, good, bad, and indif- 

 ferent, would never produce nearly that quantity." Like to 

 know ! Yes, and so should I, whether many of the wines sent 

 to us do not more or less partake of the nature of those Ameri- 

 can wines which were exposed by Dr. Hiram Cox, of Cincin- 

 nati, in 1856. The Doctor wrote, " I analysed a lot of liquors 

 for some conscientious gentlemen of our citj-, who would not 

 permit me to take samples to my office, but insisted on my 

 hriuguig my chemicals and apparatus to their store that they 

 might see the operation. I accordingly repaired to their store, 

 and analysed samples of sixteen different lots. Among them 

 were port wine, sherry wine, and Madeira wine. The distUled 

 liquors were some pure, and some vile pernicious imitations ; 

 hut the icincs had not one drop of the juice of the Grape ! (the 

 italics ai'e my own). The basis of the port wine was diluted 

 sulphuric acid coloured with elder-berry juice, with alrnn, 

 sugar, and neutral spirits. The base of the sherry wine was 

 a sort of pale malt, suljihuric acid, and bitter almond oil, with 

 a per-ceutage of alcoholic spirits from brandy. The basis of 

 the Madeira was a decoction of hops, with suljjhuric acid, 

 honey, spirit from Jamaica rum, itc. The same week, after 

 analysing the above, and exhibiting the quahty and character 

 of the Uquor to the proprietor, a sexton of one of our chiu-ches 

 informed me that he had purchased a gallon of the above port 

 ■wine to be used m the church, and that for this mixture of 

 sulphm-ic acid, alum, and elder-berry juice he paid 2 dols. 

 75 cents a-gallon." 



In the daily paper already quoted of August 24th there 

 is a capital leader and an expose, under the heading of " Cham- 

 pagne for the Million." '■ A chemist w^ithin the postal dis- 

 trict has recently been purchasing low French white wine 

 or sherry, ■with which the market is at present glutted. 

 The operator places it in bottles of the orthodox shape, and 

 submits it to the action of the soda-water machine, by which 

 it is copiously charged with carbonic acid, giving it the re- 

 quired degree of effervescence, which of course disappears 

 soon after the bottle is opened. A tinfoil capsule and an at- 

 tractive label are then added, which render this exhilirating 

 beverage fit for the market, where to our knowledge it has been 

 sold and is now on offer." So return we to our home-made 

 ■wine, the constituents of which we know, and which must have 

 been lai'gely produced by our forefathers, if we take the widely 

 dispersed names of vineyard here, wine-close there, etc. When 

 the introduction of foreign wines, and the commerce and agri- 

 culture of the coimtry improved, it was probably found that 

 the gi'ound could be more profitably employed for other pur- 

 poses ; but how many thousand acres of the surface of bare 

 ■walls could now be made useful and ornamental by means of 

 excellent wine-making Grapes ? Think of the loss to the nation 

 tlii'ough so much unproductive surface ! If I can produce in 

 a cold ungenial situation, from 700 square feet of house 

 frontage, enough Grapes to make twenty gallons of pure wine 

 annually, given the genial house frontage of half England 

 only for an answer. It is a calculation truly worth working 

 out — in casks. It would prove at any rate a grateful beverage 

 to many who cannot afford to use foreign wines in their families ; 

 and I know many of those who visit here always prefer my 

 Grape wines to sherry or port at table. I am not writing for 

 rich people, to whom these home growths may scarcely appear 

 worth a consideration, upon the principle or prejudice that no 

 ■wines can be good which are not foreign and do not cost a great 

 deal of money ; but how many of us are there who are not 

 overburdened with riches, and yet have satisfaction in knowing 



and partaking of what our owu country is capable of producing ? 

 I myself am one of the latter class, and accordingly I intend 

 to follow up this manufacture of Grape wines as being both 

 needful and convenient, and likely to contribute to the comforts 

 of those about me. — Upwards and Onwakds. 



A PEEr AT TILE WOODS IN ODD PLACES. 

 No. 1. 



TUE I.IVE 0.4K, I'WARF OAK. AND PITCH TINE. 



In the mouth of September, 18G4, I found myself one after- 

 noon in the United States Navy Yard, at Pensacola, Florida, 

 and just about starting for a walk, or rather wade through the 

 sand of that curious district. I may at once state that aU the 

 land in the immediate neighbourhood of this navy yard, and I 

 believe, though I cannot speak from experience of the interior 

 of this portion of Florida, and, indeed, to my owu knowledge of 

 the sea coast generally of the Mexican Gulf, is composed of 

 sand produced by the breaking down of coral, and thus this 

 minute insect has laboured in the formation of a coast extend- 

 ing upwards of one thousand miles. Thus we see how wonder- 

 fully the minutest and most insignificant creature is raised to 

 an important position by the omniscience of the Creator, teach- 

 ing us that however lofty our own position may he, we mast 

 not look down upon, or despise as of no importance the very 

 smallest particle in creation. 



But let us turn from the sand and try to gain some idea of 

 the various and exquisite forms springing from it, I refer to the 

 plants and trees ; and we will as we walk from the hospital in 

 the Navy Yard to the nigger camp on the Lagoon, take a passing, 

 glance at some of the most promineut beauties. Having de- 

 scended the steps and come out into the broilmg sun from 

 imder tlie piazza surrounding the building, my eye is attracted 

 by the instantaneous transition of some small object from the 

 upper raQ of the fence rimuing along the walk, on to the leaves 

 of a large Aloe growing near it. I approach as gently and 

 noiselessly as possible, and much to my surprise and delight 

 fall upon a complete small menagerie. Picture to yourself an 

 unlimited number of small eyes, the extraordinary brilliancy of 

 which, with their opalescent changes, no words can depict, each 

 pair of these belonging to a lovely little brown and bright green 

 lizard, a small obese, phlegmatic, pale green, striped with 

 darker green, tree toad, or an insect gentleman who bears the 

 inelegant local soubriquet of the " Devil's riding horse." Truly 

 his systematic and cold-blooded massacre of mosquitoes (for 

 which God bless him and give him long life and liealth), house 

 fhes, even bees and wasps, and all other winged insect game, 

 together with his evident enjoyment in their sudden destruction 

 and sanguinary end, to be devoured by him, give the gentle- 

 man with this abominable name an unenviable claim on his 

 master, without even taking into consideration his extraor- 

 dinary form. He is entirely gi-een, with six legs on his body, 

 and two large folding gauze-like wings, a very large anterior 

 thorax, to which are attached two enormously powerful long 

 arms, covered with hairs in such a manner as to enable them to 

 seize and hold with certainty his winged prey. On the top of 

 the thorax is the extremely moveable head which is a perfect 

 triangle, two of the angles of this are occupied by eyes, the 

 third by a powerful pair of mandibles with which he quickly 

 terminates the existence of his prey, and satisfies the cravings 

 of his Satanic maw. Master tree toad is also worthy of attention 

 and careful watching, for he is an active and energetic Uttle 

 fellow, although spending his days — i.e., the hot hours of the 

 day in indolence, motionless, and apparently lifeless, sitting 

 in the shade upon some gi^een leaf which on accoimt of his 

 colour forms an excellent hiding-place ; yet when the long 

 shadows of retni-ning eve bespeak the close of the hot day, and 

 the advent of the short moments of the semi-tropical twiUght, 

 he is seen issuing from his leafy covert to spring upon and 

 devour at a gulp any luckless fly or other insect which may 

 be suitable to his dainty palate. But although an active and 

 quick httle fellow, he must by no means be confounded ■with. 

 liis elegant, sprightly, and beautiful little cousin, the Itahan tree 

 frog. Our friend is emphatically the tree toad, and to mistake 

 the one for the other would be as difficult as to mistake the 

 common frog with its enormous bounds on laud, and elegance 

 in the water, for the common toad with its repulsive slowness 

 and crawling awkwardness of movement. My little lively friend 

 the lizard, needs no further description, for his elegant form and 

 hghtning-hke movements are familiar to every one acquainted 



