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to the Carboniferous and Silurian, and partly to the Cam- 

 brian, Cretaceous, and Eocene. Instead of growing in the 

 shade of virgin forests like most of the other species, the 

 Rupestris always grows in very open places, free from timber, 

 mostly in the beds of ravines exposed to the direct rays of a 

 scorching sun. The grounds where Rupestris grows are very 

 much drier and more burnt by the sun than the most arid of 

 the French meridional regions; but in the United States it 

 resists a temperature of -- 28 C. without being affected by 

 the cold. In France, the Rupestris is the species which 

 grows best in the dry and least fertile soils; in the Valley 

 of the Rhone, north of Lyons, in the winter, 1890-91, it 

 withstood cold as low as 31 C. Its resistance to cold, 

 drought, and heat is well proved by the numerous plantations 

 of Rupestris which have been made in France. 



The Rupestris grows, in the United States, in slightly 

 fertile soil; it is, with V. Berlandieri and V. Monticola, 

 the species which grows most vigorously in the least fertile 

 soils. Most of the forms of V. Rupestris, and the most 

 numerous vines (States of Missouri, Indian territory, Arkan- 

 sas,) are found in the beds of dry ravines where the soil 

 is formed of rounded siliceous pebbles, more or less large, 

 mixed with a very plastic red clay; the number of pebbles 

 is sometimes so considerable on the surface of the ravines 

 that they appear to completely constitute the soil and 

 through them the large trunk of this rustic stumpy species 

 emerges. In other regions, the pebbles are formed of 

 siliceous tufa, more or less decomposed, constituting a 

 still drier and more unfertile soil. In the south-west of 

 Missouri, the soils have the same constitution, but fragments 

 of Devonian limestone, hard, compact, and crystalline, 

 replace the siliceous pebbles; finally, in the Rupestris 

 regions of the north of Texas (Fortworth, Cleburne), the 

 limestone pebbles have been formed from cretaceous rocks 

 mixed with a blackish clay soil, but the fragments of rock 

 are always hard, never soft or chalky. It was from these 

 regions that the Rupestris Mission and Rupestris Metallica 

 came; it is also, probably, in those places that the Rupestris 

 du Lot was found amongst the Rupestris Fortworth. When 

 in the United States, a few wild vines have been found by 

 chance in the soils formed by the decomposition of chalks, or 

 in yellow soft marls, they have a feeble vigour, and often 

 chlorosis. 



