1853.) OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 307 
francs’ worth of grapes for the table, lost all or nearly all by the 
Oidium. The Eastern Pyrenees, ]’Aude, |’Herault, and a great part 
of Gard were all deplorably affected, and at Frontignan and Lunel the 
vineyards were abandoned in despair. Thousands of labourers were 
thrown out of employ, and the distress was awful. Wine in France 
is the common drink of the peasant; upon this, his bread, and 
some legumes, he labours; but the wine, bad as it is, has risen to 
double, and in the countries most injured even treble its ordinary 
price. In Lower Provence and on the Isére, the vines which escaped 
in 1851 were seriously injured in 1852. In the Burgundy district, 
the vines on the Céte d’Or were little affected in the vineyards, but 
the trellised vines were seriously so. 
Many works have been published upon this most important 
subject. All the local papers, as the Messager du Midi, teem with 
letters and reports, and schemes (all failures) to stay the plague. 
In the “ Atti dell’ Accademia Pontificia,” Professor P. Sanguinetti 
has published an essay, interesting only for the subject, but offering 
no remedy that has been found of any service to stay the evil. 
Professor Méhl, in the Botanische Zeitung, has written an able 
paper translated by the Rev. Mr. Berkeley, and published in the 
Journal of the Horticultural Society for April, 1853. He gives a 
history of the development and diffusion of the disease, and reports 
to us its extension from France to the whole length of Italy by the 
coast of Liguria to Naples, then taking a retrograde course through 
the Tyrol to Botzen, overrunning Switzerland to Wintherthur, 
and touching certain spots in Baden, and: in Wirtemburg and 
Hungary. M. Méhl has most carefully examined whether the 
Oidium of the grape lives on other plants besides the vine, but he is 
decidedly of opinion that it does not. 
Some persons, as M. Robineau, have supposed that it was 
caused by insects, because occasionally they had been found on 
diseased vines: but the idea is now utterly rejected; for not the 
slightest appearance of disease precedes the fungus, which creeps 
over the epidermis but does not enter its tissues. It envelopes the 
grape, absorbs the juices of the superficial cells, and stops the 
growth of the cuticle. The pulp expands within the fruit, bursts 
longitudinally, its juices are lost, and it dries up. In an early stage 
of the disease the fungus may be wiped off, and the fruit will come 
to maturity. The Oidiwm never matures on decayed vegetable 
substances ; it lives and fructifies only on living tissues. 
The poor peasant of the Bouches du Rhone believes that the 
cause is bad air; but at Genoa, Grenoble, Lyons, Dijon, and Stras- 
bourg, the people attribute it to gas-lights! and the vapour of 
locomotives!! and think that such inventions are infernal; and 
many works are published with such absurd imputations, and 
recommending preventives and remedies just as wise. 
By far the ablest work upon this important subject is by M. Louis 
Leclere, who, eminent as a man of science, was chosen by the 
