GRAPE-VINE. 195 



quantities of the wine called Cape, which will be good 

 when the growers know their interest better, and attend 

 more to the quality and less to the quantity. There is 

 another objection to this wine, which must be remedied 

 before Cape can be agreeable, viz. that the vines, instead 

 of being staked, as in other wine countries, are suffered 

 to trail on the ground : it is natural, therefore, to conclude 

 that those berries next the earth will rot, and a few un- 

 sound grapes will give an unpleasant flavour to a large 

 quantity of wine. 



" The juice of the ripe grape (says Dr. Darwin) is a 

 nutritive and agreeable food, consisting chiefly of sugar 

 and mucilage. The chemical process of fermentation 

 converts the sugar into spirit; converts food into poison !" 

 Yet the moderate use of wine has seldom been con- 

 demned by physicians ; and in so moist and changeable 

 a climate as England, a more plentiful draught may be 

 allowed than in warmer countries. 



Dr. Short recommends wine to be drunk in moist 

 weather, and ale in dry weather. 



Sentius, when he was praetor of Rome, said he never 

 had any wine of Chios in his house before the physician 

 prescribed it for the palpitation of the heart, a complaint 

 he laboured under; which is a convincing proof of its 

 having been used medicinally in those days. On the 

 other hand, Androcydes, in his letter to Alexander 

 the Great, says, (to correct his intemperate drinking 

 of wine,) " My good lord, remember when you take 

 your wine, that you drink the very blood of the earth ; 

 hemlock, you know, Sir, is poison to man, even so is 

 wine to hemlock." 



That an excess of this reviving beverage is pernicious 

 to the health, no one will attempt to deny, any more 

 than he would to excuse repeated intoxication. Wine is 

 not so much used in this age to debase man as it was in 



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