SO CULTIVATION OP THE 



delights of the laborious little operative of the 

 Italian vineyard. 



The road between Milan and Bologna, traverses 

 the plains of Lombardy, a country of luxuriant 

 fertility, from which the husbandman receives 

 four, and sometimes five crops in the year. The 

 intervening space, as far as Lodi, is a perfect 

 plain, in which extensive crops of rice are cul- 

 tivated. Here also the vine flourishes with a 

 luxuriance corresponding with the fertility of the 

 soil. Their wines however are not of long du- 

 ration, and their quality confirms the theory, 

 that a close argillaceous bottom, though giving to 

 the plant an exuberant foliage, is not the source 

 from which we derive the finest wines. 



From this point, as far south as Naples, the 

 ultivation is similar, differing from that of 

 Switzerland, both as to pruning and exposure. 

 The vines are planted in rows, about twenty 

 feet apart, and the plants in the row at the dis- 

 tance of six feet from each other. Instead of 

 being, as in Switzerland, cut down to the height 

 of four feet, they are suffered to shoot forth their 

 branches to the extent to which nature limits 

 them, and the fruit may be seen in ripening clus- 

 ters, frequently twenty feet from the ground. 

 The support is the mulberry tree, the branches 

 of which are reduced to the length of five or six 

 feet from the trunk at the point of diverging, the 

 inner shoots being so cut as to form a frame re- 

 sembling in shape the cone of a wine glass. The 

 branches of the vine are trailed in graceful 

 festoons from tree to tree, the tendrils insinuat- 

 ing through the frame, form tops in such a man- 



