GRAPR 73 



when they attain a certain age, as the Aacalon, or Sultana 

 raisin, none. The weight of a berry depends not only on 

 its size, but on the thickness of its skin and texture of the 

 flesh, the lightest being the thin-skinned and juicy sorts, as 

 the Sweet Water or Muscadine ; and what are considered 

 as large berried of these varieties, will weigh from five to 

 seven pennyweights, and measure from one to two-thirds of 

 an inch in girth. A good-sized bunch of the same sorts 

 may weigh from two to six pounds ; but bunches have been 

 grown of the Syrian Grape, in Syria, weighing forty pounds, 

 and in England weighing from ten to nineteen pounds. A 

 single vine, in a large pot, or grown as a dwarf standard, in 

 the manner practised in the vineyards in the North of France, 

 ordinarily produces from three to nine bunches ; but by 

 superior management in gardens in England, the number 

 if bunches is prodigiously increased, and one plant, that of 

 the red Hamburgh sort, in the vinery of the royal gardens 

 at Hampton Court, has produced two thousand two hundred 

 bunches, averaging one pound each, or in all nearly a ton. 

 That at Valentine, in Essex, has produced two thousand 

 bunches of nearly the same average weight. 



The age to which the vine will attain in >varm climates is 

 so great as not to be known. It is supposed to oe equal or 

 even to surpass that of the oak. Pliny speaks of a vino 

 which had existed six hundred years ; and Bose says, there 

 are vines in Burgundy upward of four hundred \ears of age 



In Italy there are vineyards which have been in a flour 

 ishing state for upward of three centuries, and Miller tells 

 us that a vineyard a hundred years old is reckoned young. 

 The extent of the branches of the vine, in certain situation* 

 and circumstances, is commensurate with its produce and 

 soil. In the hedges of Italy, and woods of America, they 

 are found overtopping the highest elm and poplar trees ; and 

 in England, one plant, (lately dead,) trained against a row 

 of houses in Northallerton, covered a space, in 1585, of one 

 hundred and thir^y-sr- r en square yards ; it was then above 



