GEOGKAPHY OP PLANTS. 



481 



juice in the most skilful manner, and preserving the result until it shall have 

 acquired the highest degree of perfection it can attain by age, and selling as 

 the product of this celebrated vineyard only such vintages as are calculated to 

 acquire* or maintain its celebrity that a reputation has been obtained and 

 preserved. 



Even in the land of the vine all seasons are not alike propitious. An ex- 

 amination of a tabular view of the vintages of four of the most diverse and 

 celebrated wine countries, extending from almost the western to the most 

 eastern points, where famous wines are produced in Europe, exhibits the un- 

 certainty attending the production of a good or fine vintage even in the favored 

 land of the vine. This table extends from 1775 to 1842, and by it we find 

 that for the sixty-eight yeai-s noted, that there were of the following varieties, 



Seldom did three good or middling good years occur consecui'\'ely, while in 

 the Rhenish provinces three, four, or live bad ye^irs have thus occ.rred. The 

 expression "good" refers to quality only. 



A reference to the Wine Chronicle for 432 years, from 1420 to 1S52, exhibits 

 the remarkable facts, that out of this long series of more than four centuries 

 there were but eleven (11) years that were eminently distinguished for the 

 superior quality of the wine produced; twenty-eight (28) very good years; 

 one hundred and eighteen (118) pretty good ones, producing a good wine; 

 seventy-six (76) that showed a middling quality of wine; and one hundred 

 and ninety-nine (199) inferior. These four centuries and a third exhibit one 

 hundred and fourteen (114) years of ample yield; eighteen (18) of middling 

 product; ninety-nine (99) of poorer, and two hundred and one (201) failures, 

 that did not pay the expenses of labor, &c. Thus the crop was seriously 

 injured three years out of four. Think of this, ye complaining vignerons in 

 the eastern sections of the United States, who are discouraged if but a few 

 leaves drop from mildew; who talk of "rot," and "shrivel," and insects, as if 

 they only were not the favored ones, and they only endured a climate where 

 grape-growing cannot be made profitable. Here are wide districts of country 

 whose staple crop and main dependence is the vine, which fails one-half of the 

 time, and for three years out of four is seriously injured. How will the assertion 

 that our country is not adapted to the growth of the vine be sustained, when 

 we know that we have districts east of the Missi.ssippi where it has not for 

 eighteen years, probably the entire period since it was planted, failed to mature 

 a good crop of grapes, and a wider district in California where no report of a 

 season of failure has reached us, even by the mouth of tradition. 



On a further examiaation of the preceding table of annual, summer, and 

 other means, we obsen e that as we proceed towards the south, other circum- 

 stances being favorable, the temperature of the hottest month increases, anid 

 with it the quality of the wines. The wines produced in the region around 

 Vienna, in Austria, are better in general than those of the Rhine; those of 

 Burgundy have long been famous. These districts enjoy a month having a 

 temperature of 70° and 72^ Fahrenheit, respectively. 



37 A 



