256 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



Martyn is an advocate for the renewal of grape cul- 

 ture in this country for wine. For that purpose he 

 recommends that the vines should be trained very 

 near the ground, he having found that, by this method 

 of training, the berries were much increased in size, 

 and also ripened earlier. The same method is pur- 

 sued in the northern part of France, where it is found 

 to be successful. 



The culture of the grape, as an article of husbandry, 

 extends over a zone about two thousand miles in 

 breadth, that is, from about the twenty-first to the 

 fiftieth degree of north latitude ; and reaching in 

 length from the western shores of Portugal, at least 

 to the centre of Persia, and probably to near the 

 sources of the Oxus and the Indus. Farther north 

 than that, it does not ripen so as to be fit for the 

 making of wine; and farther south, it seems to be 

 as much injured by the excessive heat. The best 

 wines are made about the centre of the zone; the 

 wines towards the north being harsh and austere, 

 and the grapes towards the south being better adapted 

 for drying and preserving as raisins. Thus, in 

 Spain, while the wine of Xeres, in the Sierra Morena 

 (the real Sherry), is an excellent wine, and while 

 that of the ridge of Apulaxarras, in Granada, is very 

 tolerable, the grapes of the warm shores about Ma- 

 laga, and in Valentia, are chiefly fit only for raisins. 

 So, also, while the slopes of Etna, and those of the 

 mountains in Greece, furnish some choice vines, the 

 grapes upon the low shores in those countries have 

 also to be dried. It should seem, that the grapes are 

 always the higher flavoured and the more vinous, the 

 greater the natural temperature under which they 

 are ripened, but that an extreme heat throws the 

 juice into the acetous fermentation before the vinous 

 one has time to be matured. We have an analogous 

 case in the fermentation of malt liquors in this coun- 



