1853.] OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 305 
400,000 out of her stock for that season of 1,600,000 bottles. 
Further destruction was checked by obtaining from Paris ten or 
twelve waggon-loads of ice, which, strewn in the caves, lowered 
their temperature. 
When the wine is thus stacked, the merchants visit the caves to 
buy, and it is scarcely recommended to their notice, unless the 
breakage can be shewn to be not less than ten per cent. It is 
this loss, and the cost of labour in preparing, that enhances so much 
the value of the wine of Champagne. 
The condition of the wine in the bottle can be easily ascertained 
by a simple means. A fine hollow needle can be thrust through 
the cork, and a taste obtained from the pressure within, through the 
tube. On withdrawing the circular needle, the elasticity of the 
cork closes the puncture. 
Of the quantity of champagne made, it is difficult to obtain 
accurate information ; 50,000,000 bottles would be alow estimate 
for the genuine product of Champagne: but the demand for wines 
that effervesce is so great, that it is now supplied from the vine- 
yards of St. Perey, Hermitage, Rhine, Moselle, Burgundy, Bordeaux, 
in fact from every wine district in which they choose to make it 
by sweetening and treating it as in Champagne. 
But this is not the only mode of making champagne even with 
genuine French wine. Very large quantities are made in Paris and 
elsewhere ; in that city there are numerous establishments for such 
manufacture ; one house alone sending out 1,000,000 bottles a 
year. They sweeten the light common white wines of France, 
and then impregnate them with carbonic acid gas by means of 
a pneumatic apparatus, and bottle them, as in Champagne, while 
effervescent. 
Mr. Brockedon gave little information upon the wines of Bor- 
deaux, except to shew that the same skill in a judicious combination 
of the wines of neighbouring growths, gave the greatest celebrity 
to the most eminent of the wine establishments on the Garonne. 
In the spring of 1845, a fungus on the grape was first observed 
in the hothouses of Mr. Slater of Margate, by his very intelligent 
and observant gardener, Mr. Edward Tucker, whose name has been 
given to it by the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, the eminent naturalist, viz. 
Oidium Tuckeri. It is an egg-shaped fungus, one of an immense 
family of this class of destroyers, but one not before known or re- 
cognized ; and though it bears aclose resemblance to those which are 
found upon the potato, peach, chrysanthemum, cucumber, groundsel, 
&c., yet it is distinguished from all others by a microscopic observer, 
and has never yet been found upon any other plant, and when found 
upon the grape has always been destructive. Its first appearance 
is like a whitish mildew, shewing itself principally upon the young: 
grape when about the size of a pea. 
When the spore of this fungus has settled on the young berry, 
