38 " THE LEAVES OF THE TREE were FOR THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS." 

 VINE TROUBLES IN FRANCE. 



(From the San Francisco Chronicle of December lth } 1892.) 



PARIS, November 15. The annual vintage, one of the greatest fetes known in 

 French rural districts, is ended ; the grapas are gathered, and the vignerons, their 

 work finished, have filled their glasses and sung, for the last time until another 

 autumn, the old refrain : 



Bon Francais, quand je vois mou verre 

 Plein deuce vin couleur de feu, 

 Je songe en remerciant Dieu 

 Qu'ils n'en ont pas en Angleterre ! 



"All the slopes in the south, the center, the east, and the west, all those in the 

 Burgundy and in the Gueyenne, in the Champagne and in the Gascogny, in the 

 Lorraine and in the Languedoc; all those plains of Anjou and Touraine, as well as 

 the mountains of Auvergne and of Dauphiny, have been heard from, and we 

 know now of the quantity and quality of this year's wine harvest. 



"For a quarter of a century the phylloxera has been among French vines. The 

 Gard, the Herault and the valley of the Rhone were the regions in which that 

 destructive insect was first found, and then came the turn of the Bordelais and 

 the Charente. The plantations in the center of France and those in Burgundy 

 were not touched but in the afflicted districts milldew, odium, and other evils also 

 fell on the great fields. The average produce of wine fell from thirty-five and 

 forty hectoliters per hectare to twelve and fourteen only, and in four or five years 

 land had lost $200,000,000 of its value. 



"France is not the largest wine producer in the world, however. There are 

 21,215,125 acres of vineyards in Europe, and all the rest of the earth shows less 

 than 1,000,000 acres Italy figures at the top with 8,010,000 acres planted in 

 grapes, France comes next with 5,832,000 acres, and Spain is third with 3,745,000 

 acres. Last year Italy produced 806,000,000 gallons of wine, Spain 702,000,000 

 gallons, Austria-Hungary 235,000,000 gallons, Germany 63,800,000 gallons; 

 Switzerland 25,800,000 gallons, and over 70,000,000 gallons were produced in 

 Algeria. 



" Phylloxera in Champagne ! You can perhaps imagine the excitement there 

 was all over this country, and the excitement was not lessened the past summer 

 when it was discovered that other vineyards had been attacked. Champagne 

 making is the fortune of that part of France, and it is an enormous fortune. In 

 plentiful years the production of white champagne wine is not less than 80,000,000 

 bottles. But the vineyards of Champagne are more vigorous and healthy than all 

 others, hence they were able to resist the phylloxera. Still tons of sulphide of 

 carbon have been used up there, and the vines that were infected with the disease 

 were cut away and burned and the soil was poisoned 



"There is not much possibility that the prize of $60,000 offered by the State to the 

 discoverer of an efficacious means of destroying phylloxera will ever be awarded." 



Just as certain as the suicidal practice of depleting the human body 

 by indiscriminate blood-letting to cure disease had to give way to a more 

 rational mode of treatment, so also must the prevailing theories of vine 

 cure succumb to the light of wisdom and common sense. 



The phylloxera made its appearance in the south of France about the 

 year 1863 and destroyed a great many vineyards before its presence was 

 discovered. One of the first victim's whoe-e vineyard was destroyed and 

 rooted up in 1867, replanted another part of his estate the following winter. 

 He divided the ground to be planted in three different parts of equal size, 

 and as much as possible, containing the same nature of soil. Each plot was 

 planted with the same kind of vine, and received the same treatment even 

 after, with the only difference that each lot of vines was planted on a dif- 

 ferent scale. One was planted 4x4, or four feet every way, the other 

 6x6, or six feet every way, the last one planted 10 x 10, or ten feet 



