324 



* KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[September 1, 1886. 



deserving the name can ba produced. The flavour of a 

 grape tells you nothing of the final flavour of the fermented 

 juices. Tbe same vines grown in two adjoining fields 

 where the stratification or the aspect is difiereut yield com- 

 pletely diflerent results. The wine, too, must be kept for 

 several years before the flavour into which it will ripen is 

 defined. The best, therefore, which can be obtained in a 

 new country is tentative and imperfect. Mi-. Castella, how- 

 ever, had received honourable recognition from the best 

 European authorities at the Sydney Exhibition for his 

 hocks and clarets. The Governor was to go over liis manu- 

 factory and congratulate him on his triumph. St. Hubert's 

 was fifty miles from Melbourne in the valley of the Yarra. 

 The blue satin railway carriage took us to the nearest 

 station. There we clambered upon an old ftishioned four-horse 

 coach, and after a dusty drive of eight miles we reached a 

 large roomy, straggling house, built with attempts at orna- 

 mental architecture, high-gabled roofs, a central tower with 

 a flying outside staircase and gallery, the inevitable deep 

 verandahs, and, as Mr. Castella's guests were often nume- 

 rous, detached rooms, run up with planks, scattered in the 

 shrul)beries. The Yarra wound invisibly batween deep 

 banks across the plains in front of the windows. Behind 

 it, {(iv off, was a high range of mountains, from which 

 columns of smoke were rising in half a dozen directions from 

 forest bush fires, either lighted on purpose to clear the 

 ground, or the careless work of wood-cutters or wandering 

 natives. The fields immedLately adjoining were the most 

 brilliant green. The vines were all in full leaf. There were 

 three hundred acres of them standing in rows, and staked 

 like raspberry bushes, each bush powdered with sulphur, and 

 smelling strongly of it. Our host himself was a vigorous, 

 hale-looking man of sixty or upwards, with lively French 

 features, light grey, merry eyes, with a touch of melancholy 

 at the bottom of them — to be recognised at once a? an 

 original person well worth attention. . . . We were walked 

 over the estate under our umbrellas, for the sun was 

 blazing down upon us. We saw the vinos growing, the 

 presses, the rows of hogsheads in the cellars, the vats in 

 which the grapes were trodden. I learnt here, as a fact new 

 to me, that if fine wine is wanted, the human foot is still in 

 requisition. Machinery crushes the grape-stone, and taints 

 the flavour." [One would say that a suitable material could be 

 produced which should give the same quality- of pressure as the 

 human foot sujjplies.] " We had to taste from various casks, 

 and profess to appreciate the differences, which we none of us 

 could," [We venture to question whether Mr. Castella really 

 required his visitors thus to "say the thing which was not."] 

 " for the palate.s of the uninitiated soon lose the power to 

 discriminate." 



We quote no more, but the whole account of this visit is 

 very interesting — especially so to us, perhaps, because we 

 had already heard so much fi-om a kinsman of Mr. Castella's 

 respecting that gentleman's success at St. Hubert's. Our 

 author's sketch of !Mr. Castella's partner, Mr. Rowan, a 

 relative of Hamilton Rowan, with his anecdotes of Smith 

 (J'Brit-n's rebellion, including a battle in Ulster in which 

 five hundred Catholics were killed, but of which history has 

 hitherto declined to leave any records, is amusing. We 

 hope it is a little more trustworthy than the account of a 

 certain American host, who came out upon Mr. Froude 

 with a saying about Niagara which Mr. Froude regards as 

 new, but which has been repeated, to our personal know- 

 ledge, for at least a quarter of a century as an ancient jest, 

 the remark, namely, that the falling of water over a 

 precipice is nothing wonderful, " the wonder would be if 

 the water did not fiiU." Mr. Froude saems, indeed, to have 

 been unfortunate in being made the victim of several stories 

 such as Americans keep for gohemouclfis. He may have 



seen " a mansion travelling without the help of an Aladdin's 

 lamp " ; but it assuredly does not quite so commonly happen 

 as his account would imply that, " if a house is placed 

 inconveniently, they lift it on rollers, and move it bodily 

 from on3 place to another, while the occupants sleep and eat 

 and go on with their employments as if nothing were 

 happening." 



Mr. Fronde's touches at science are amusingly weak. He 

 mixes with remaiks on observations made at Melbourne by 

 that faithful worker, Mr. EUery, remarks on the contradic- 

 tions of science, seeing that " he had read in a French 

 scientific journal how the earth's axis had once been at 

 right angles to the ecliptic, whence it had slowly inclined, 

 as we see a spinning-top incline, till it had reached an angle 

 of 45° or more, and was now half-w.ay back to tlie perpen- 

 dicular." We shall hear next that Mr. Hampden's absur- 

 dities, because they may have been mentioned in a scientific 

 journal, indicate the helplessly unsatisfactory state of 

 astronomy. " How many times," maunders Sir. Froude 

 (really we can use no more respectful expression), " must 

 we outsiders learn up our science, and then unlearn it? 

 Each new generation of philosophers laughs at the con- 

 clusions of its predecessors." Considering the respect with 

 which the most advanced astronomer of to-day traces the 

 progress of astronomy from the time of Galileo to our own, 

 nay the esteem in which the labours of Hipparchus and 

 Ptolemy are held (even their misapprehensions being by no 

 means ridiculed), these sayings of our author's would ba 

 altogether unjustified, even though suggested by real dis- 

 coveries. As relating to a preposterous paradox such as 

 only a man altogether ignorant of dynamical laws could 

 have imagined they appear particulai'ly preposterous. 



Mr. Froude suggests that the heavy eastward winds of 

 high latitudes may counteract the retarding influence of the 

 westward flow of the tidal wave on the earth's rotation. 

 Such a suggestion might do very well for the author of the 

 paradox about the earth's axial pose, for it implies the same 

 sort of ignorance of mechanical laws. Eastward winds can 

 only exist as counterbalancing westward ones, and action 

 ancl reaction being always equal, there can be no slightest 

 trace of eastward beyond westward tendency in atmospheric 

 movements. 



" Oceana," however, despite these defects, is a book well 

 worth reading by those who would form an idea of the 

 widespread influence and of the rapid growth of the English- 

 s]>eaking communities. Not perhaps quite consciously, Mr. 

 Froude does much in this volume to show how shallow and 

 semisavage is the imperial idea of England's place in the 

 world's history, how noble and worthy on the contrary her 

 position as the mother of great nations of the future. 



ETNA'S ERUPTIONS. 



(C ontlnued from p. 301.) 



I flE eruption of 1819 was in some re-spects 

 even more remarkable than that of 1811. 

 The Val del Bove, which, as already men- 

 tioned, breaks in upon the dome of Etna 

 upon the eastern side, was covered by a sua 

 of burning lava. Three large caverns had 

 opened not far from the fissures, out of 

 ava had flowed in 1811 ; and from these, flames, 

 smoke, red-hot cinders, and sand were flung out with 

 singular impetuosity. Presently another cavern opened 

 lower down, but still no lava flowed from the mountain. 

 At length a fifth opening formed, yet lower, and from this 

 a torrent of lava poured out, which spread over the whole 



which tile 



