SEPTEMBEK 203 



has presented a Bill to Congress for this object, and all 

 lovers of wild life must unite in wishing him success in 

 his enterprise. 



XLIX 



No Englishman none at least with a fair smattering 

 of the history of his own country can visit the 

 famous district of the Medoc in the golden sun- 

 shine of September and fail to sympathise with the pas- 

 sionate tenacity with which English kings and statesmen 

 clung to their heritage in that opulent land at the cost of 

 the Hundred Years' War. To realise its richness, one 

 should be there during the vintage the claret vintage, 

 I was about to say, but ' claret ' is a word unknown to 

 the French cultivator. The term vinum claretum, i.e. 

 clarified wine, came into early use in English as 

 ' claret ' or ' dairy/ to distinguish the beautifully pel- 

 lucid wines of Bordeaux from those of Burgundy and 

 other vine-lands. Except during the vintage, the 

 features of the country are tame. League upon league 

 of gently rolling upland, bounded on the east by the 

 tawny estuary of the Gironde, weary the eye in winter 

 with their brown monotony in summer with their 

 unbroken dark verdure. Vine-land, in truth, during 

 eleven months of the year is as little attractive as 

 any prospect under the sun. Scarce a tree to break 

 the winter blast or temper the summer heat. The 

 vines themselves are pruned down to exact uniformity 

 of stature ; no hedgerow timber is permitted, and the 

 skyline is broken only by rare and exiguous groves 

 round the chateaux and by the grey clustered roofs of 



