VINE IN ITALY. 85 



success. It is an actual regeneration, accompa- 

 nied by its own peculiar character; and to these 

 traits successively developed by the difference of 

 soil, climate, and treatment, must he look, for- 

 getting the circumstances by which it was affect- 

 ed at its European home. 



If this should excite the incredulity of the 

 agriculturalist, or raise in his mind the idea of a 

 discrepancy in our testimony, we refer him to 

 the vine growing district of Naples, where he 

 may see a striking difference existing in the 

 vine, from cuttings of the same plant, though 

 standing within fifty yards of each other. The 

 locale, known by celebrity, is on the side of Ve- 

 suvius, descending as far as the point to which 

 by the famous eruption of the seventy-ninth year 

 of the Christian era, the ashes were thrown, and 

 which forms the line of demarkation, between the 

 volcanic and natural soils. Here the vines are 

 totally dissimilar, and to an unpractised observa- 

 tion, would hardly be recognised. The first af- 

 fording a wine, the fame of which has inflamed 

 in every part of the globe the appetite of the 

 gourmand, while that of the natural soil is an 

 ordinary, if not inferior beverage. A like dif- 

 ference is observed in the plant which shows 

 another foliage, pushes its branches with a dimin- 

 ished vigour, the stock assuming a different 

 colour, and having, to a superficial observation, 

 such distinctive points, as to induce the belief 

 that it was a different member of the family. 



This, however, is a digression. In crossing 

 the Appenines, on entering the dominions of 

 Tuscany, vineyards from the base almost to the 

 H 



