NOTE ON THE DECORATIVE VALUE 

 OF THE VINE 



BY THE EDITOR 



THE great antiquity of the grape-vine is a matter not 

 open to dispute, for its leaves have even been discovered 

 in the tufa at Montpellier, and grape seeds have been 

 found in several lake dwellings which belong to the 

 Bronze Age. It has been cultivated for many thousand 

 years, for we are told that " Noah began to be an 

 husbandman, and he planted a vineyard " ; whilst 

 Egyptian records of grape-growing and the making of 

 wine carry us back to an even earlier date. 



The vine seems to have been introduced into England 

 in the second or third century after Christ, for, according 

 to Tacitus, " Solum, practu oleam vitemque et caetera 

 calidioribus terris oriri sucta, patiens frugum, faccundum." 

 Yet Stow says that the Emperor Probus, who lived 

 towards the end of the third century, " permitted the 

 Brytains and others that they might have vines and make 

 wine." Nearly forty vineyards are recorded in Domesday 

 Book as existing in the south and east of England, and 

 every abbey or monastery of any importance in the 

 southern half of the country seems to have had its vine- 

 yard in the Middle Ages. Holborn, Westminster, and 

 Vine Street, Piccadilly, were sites of old vineyards and 

 wine-presses ; though the best grapes and the best wine 

 seem to have been produced in Herefordshire, Shrop- 

 shire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire. Of course 

 all these vineyards were in the open air, the vines being 



