GK APE-VINE. 



181 



Although wine is not made in Egypt, vines are much 

 cultivated, and the grapes have a delicious perfume : the 

 greater part of those which are eaten there, are of that 

 species, of which the fruit contains only a sino-le seed. 

 The leaves of the vine are of great utility in the kitchens 

 of Egypt : they serve to envelope large balls of hashed 

 meat, one of the dishes most commonly presented at good 

 tables. It is necessary that the leaves should be young : 

 and, they are frequently sold at a dearer rate than the 

 grapes themselves. (Sonnini's Travels in Egypt.) In this 

 country, vine-leaves are used in roasting those delicious 

 little birds called wheat-ears. 



Pliny concludes, that the vine was very rare in Italy in 

 the time of Numa, who ordered that no libations of wine 

 should be made at funerals; and to encourage the pruning 

 of vines, he prohibited the use of any wines, in sacrifices 

 to the gods, that were cut from vines which had not been 

 pruned. The same author cites, from M. Varro, " that 

 Mezentius, the king of Tuscany, aided the Rutilians of 

 Ardea in their wars against the Latins, for no other hire 

 but the wine and the vines which were in the territories 

 of the Latins." He adds, " that wines did not come into 

 much repute until six hundred years after the foundation 

 of Rome." 



Julius Caesar found vines growing in Languedoc and 

 Provence ; but other parts of Gaul were totally without 

 vines at that time. Strabo remarks, that Languedoc and 

 Provence produced the same fruit as Italy; but it was not 

 until about the year 270, that the vine was planted in the 

 northern parts of Gaul, and about the rivers Rhine, Maine, 

 and Moselle, and in Hungary. 



The varieties of the grape-vine are very numerous ; and 

 we have accounts of some of them growing to an extra- 

 ordinary size, arid producing such fruit as appears almost 

 incredible, to our northern conception of grapes. Strabo, 



