INTRODUCTION. 63 



Tine. To see the barren source of a prolific 

 vineyard shooting its luxuriant branches through 

 the Trellis which shades and adorns the cottage 

 of the Swiss vine dresser, reminds us of the curse 

 on our race, which visits the sins of the father on 

 his unborn children, to the third and fourth ge- 

 neration. 



The foreign vine inherits in Switzerland the 

 like entail^ and, by its sterility, mourns for an 

 equal period a country and a home. But here 

 the malediction ends, and the unprofitable vine, 

 which has never cheered with a solitary blossom 

 the toils of cultivation, sees the patient vigneron 

 rewarded by a wide spreading posterity, whose 

 purple treasures redeem the debt justly due to 

 perseverance, and so " fill the garner with 

 plenty, that the presses burst forth with new 

 wine." This tardy process illy suits the mercu- 

 rial temperature of many of our agricultural 

 community, who prefer for the most part a har- 

 vest varying with the capabilities of their differ- 

 ent soils, to " some thirty, some sixty, and some 

 an hundred fold." But for such, unfortunately, 

 nature will not reverse her laws, nor change the 

 undeviating course prescribed to her by nature's 

 God. If therefore, we be not content to wait 

 with patience, the issue of her march, availing of 

 results which has cost the European planter 

 much labour and expense, and years of patient 

 cultivation, we realize the story of the silly boy 

 in the fable, who, in thrusting his hand into the 

 jar of filberts, grasped more than he could carry, 

 and lost the object of his avaricious desires. To 

 most of us, the prospect of immediate gain is the 



