AN^D WIKE MAKIN"G. 187 



prepare ourselves at once to see the 100,000 vines 

 already destroyed, amount to millions. Allow me, 

 therefore, to give you here, my experience and my 

 opinion as to the best means to reconquer the lost 

 ground ; for as to averting the destroyer, I think we 

 had better dispense with the application of any chem- 

 ical preventive. The great prize offered by France for 

 such an invention has not yet been won ; and even if 

 it had been, how could we employ, and perhaps more 

 than once, a chemical preparation on stretches of 100 

 acres, to a depth of 4 feet ? And where is the 

 money to come from ? And neither is there any re- 

 liance to be put on the power of resistance of the 

 younger vines, or on the richness of the soil. My own 

 eyes witnessed the Phylloxera crawling on its victims 

 entirely regardless of individual, young or old, luxuri- 

 ous or lean ; all Asiatic varieties of the Vitis vi7iifera, 

 that is to say, every grapevine imported from Europe, 

 has to succumb to the relentless double sting of these 

 myriads of lice — the roots rot ! No more is manuring, 

 how much soever to be recommended in other respects, 

 a preservative against the inroads of these insects. As 

 the rings grow wider and wider from the spot where 

 the stone has fallen into the water, be it deep or shal- 

 low, so the circle of devastation of the Phylloxera ex- 

 pands from the first point of infection toward the out- 

 skirts over rich and poor land, with scarcely any differ- 

 ence ; the strong and the weak have to perish alike. 

 In three years the work is done. In the first you will 

 not remark much, excepting perhaps a fading of color 

 on the leaves ; in the second, you see the branches no 

 longer hanging down in sweeping boughs, but standing 

 upright, shortened and stiff, with a yellow foliage early 

 in fall ; in the third, their appearance is entirely crip- 

 pled and shorn ; they look like old willow stumps, and 

 the horses have to tear them out to be burned. 



