276 FOOTNOTES FROM 



injured the vines in the Balearic Islands, utterly de- 

 stroyed the vintage in Madeira, greatly injured it in the 

 Greek Islands, and destroyed the ciirrants in Zaute and 

 Cephalonia, rendering them almost unfit for use, and so 

 diminished the supply that 500 gatherers did the ordin- 

 ary work of 8000 ! But it is in France that its fright- 

 ful ravages are chiefly to be regarded as a national 

 calamity, where the produce of the soil in wine is said 

 to exceed 500 millions of hectolitres ; two -fifths of the 

 usual quantity of wine made there has been destroyed, 

 and what has been made is bad. The vineyards of the 

 Me'doc, in 1851, were untouched, and the cultivators 

 laughed at the existence of the oidium ; but last year 

 the disease showed itself everywhere in the Gironde, 

 even to the borders of the Me'doc, with serious injury. 

 The eastern Pyrenees were all deplorably affected, and at 

 Frontignan and Lunel the vineyards were abandoned in 

 despair. Thousands of labourers were thrown out of 

 employ, and the distress was awful. Wine, in France, 

 is the common drink of the peasant ; upon this, his 

 bread, and some legumes, he labours ; but the wine, bad 

 as it is, has risen to double, and, in the countries most 

 injured, treble its ordinary price." Strange to say, 

 " the vine mildew does not occur in the United States 

 on native vines, but only on those which are imported ; 

 and the American varieties cultivated in Switzerland and 

 elsewhere are uniformly exempt." 



A very familiar example of an oidium occurs on decay- 

 ing oranges, commencing at first in minute, distinct, pul- 

 verulent spots, which speedily become confluent, and of 

 a deep greenish-grey tinge. This genus of fungi is 



