THE GEAPE. 133 



during the blossoming-time in spring that it specially re- 

 quires coolness, and that whatever may be the tempera- 

 ture in these countries during the day, at night, at least 

 at that season, it is extremely low, most of our soldiers' 

 nocturnal marches there being recorded to have taken 

 place in a cold, bracing, and even frosty air ; a regular 

 period of rest being thus afforded to the plant during 

 each 24 hours, compensating for the extreme heat it has 

 afterwards to endure. But the vine requires not only 

 the repose of night alternating with day, as necessary 

 generally to vegetables as to animals, but also the perio- 

 dical rest of winter after summer ; and Sir Emerson Ten- 

 nent observes in his Ceylon, that vines taken to that island 

 grew freely, but, like the peaches, cherries, and other 

 European fruit-trees introduced there, became evergreens, 

 and, exhausted by the ceaseless excitement of uninter- 

 rupted hot weather, bore leaves indeed abundantly, but 

 never ripened fruit. The government agent in whose 

 garden they grew conceiving, however, that " the activity 

 of the plants might be equally checked by exposing them 

 to an extreme of warmth as by subjecting them to cold, 

 tried with perfect success the experiment of laying bare 

 the roots in the strongest heat of the sun. The result 

 verified his conjecture. The circulation of th,e sap was 

 arrested, the vines obtained the needful repose, and the 

 grapes, which before had fallen almost unformed from the 

 tree, are now brought to thorough maturity," though it 

 is added that they are still inferior in flavour to those 

 produced at home. A similar experiment in affording the 

 vine an artificial winter by laying bare its roots, and which 

 was equally successful, is recorded in the Transactions of 

 the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India, under 

 the date of 1824, but the system does not seem to have 

 been applied anywhere to any practical extent. 



On the western coast of Africa the vine produces fruit 

 twice in the year ; in Morocco grapes abound ; and we 

 have daily proof of the rapid improvement taking place 

 both in the quantity and quality of the wine produced in 

 the British possessions in S. Africa. 



As regards Australia, in 1830 specimens of the best 



