The Grape. 1 1 1 



the fruit, the variety it affords, under cultivation, alike in 

 form, colour, and flavour, is inexhaustible. The latter we 

 can always depend upon as sure to be elevated, generous, 

 dulcet, unalloyed. By rights, every berry should contain 

 five seeds. It is seldom, however, that more than three 

 come to maturity. 



The potential longevity of the vine is unquestionably 

 very great; some think it can live for centuries. So is the 

 attainable bulk of the principal stem, feeble and attenu- 

 ated as the branches are. History furnishes examples of 

 bulk even prodigious. The statue of Jupiter, made for 

 the ancient Etrurian city of Populonia, so Pliny tells us, 

 was of vine-wood. So were the architectural ornaments 

 of the temple of Juno, at Metapontum in Lucania. In 

 a later age the doors of the cathedral of Ravenna were 

 constructed of vine-wood, the planks twelve feet long and 

 fifteen inches wide. These statements, taken in connec- 

 tion with the well-known hardness and compactness of 

 the wood when old, are rendered perfectly credible by 

 what is certain in regard to the great Californian vine, 

 unfortunately now no longer in existence, having been cut 

 down because of ill health in 1875. It stood at Monte- 

 cito, near the sea, in Santa Barbara county, with a 

 romantic incident for the very beginning. A young 

 Spanish lady was presented by her lover with a riding- 

 whip, the handle of which was made of a vine-cane. She 

 planted it, by his request; it is to be hoped that the 

 current of their own happiness moved part passu : in any 

 case, it grew so wonderfully, that when cut down the 



