The Grape. 109 



distance, from the root, of a hundred and fourteen feet. 

 Many shoots always run in company, as imaged again in 

 the wild clematis, or " Traveller's joy." When trained, as 

 it easily may be, so as to climb into a Lombardy poplar, 

 or even into a laburnum, assisted a little at first, then 

 allowed to do as it pleases, it soon presents a wonderfully 

 charming appearance. After a few years' growth, the 

 great arms swing themselves in the most fantastic manner 

 from bough to bough, throwing out graceful pendants and 

 festoons, such as are within the power of no other 

 ligneous plant of temperate latitudes. Throughout the 

 summer it is dressed with the large, broad leaves, five to 

 ten inches across, so loved and admired by Art, and 

 which, though substantial, are yet sufficiently thin, and 

 though plentiful, sufficiently far apart, to allow easy and 

 pleasant passage to the sunlight. Their long slim stalks, 

 and the great angular spaces in the blade, again give 

 help, so that a use for the vine even more delightful yet 

 may be secured, and that is for the summer-roofing of an 

 arbour. Looked at from below, the idea they give then 

 of lucid green has its counterpart only in the translucent 

 verdure of a grove of young beeches in the month of 

 May. In autumn, before they drop, they turn deep 

 yellow, clouded or veined with crimson, and in some 

 varieties become purely and wholly crimson, rivals then 

 of the sugar-maple, more brilliant in death than in the 

 full vigour of existence. The climbing is accomplished 

 by means, as said above, of the "tendrils," those inno- 

 cent green fingers which in their general history, many 



