200 HISTORY OF FRUITS. 



of them should have been so little attended to, where the 

 shelter of the hills, and the soil, seem to offer so promis- 

 ing a situation, and more particularly so as the vine does 

 not require that depth of soil so necessary to ensure good 

 crops of corn ; for it is known to prosper best where the 

 soil is not more than sixteen or eighteen inches above 

 the chalk or gravel. 



We read in the " Museum Rusticum," that there was 

 in the year 1763, a noble vineyard attached to Aruridel 

 Castle in Sussex, a seat of the Duke of Norfolk's, and 

 that it succeeded so well that it annually yielded a con- 

 siderable quantity of wine. At that period there were 

 above sixty pipes of this wine in his Grace's cellar at 

 Arundel : it was a kind of Burgundy ; and we are told 

 that although it was not of quite so fine a flavour as the 

 wines of Beaune, yet it much exceeded quantities of 

 Burgundy wine annually imported into England, and 

 most of what is consumed commonly in France. 



Among the MS. notes of the late Peter Collinson is 

 the following memorandum. " Oct. 18, 1765, I went to 

 see Mr. Rogers's vineyard at Parson's Green, all of Bur- 

 gundy grapes, and seemingly all perfectly ripe. I did 

 not see a green grape in all this great quantity. He does 

 not expect to make less than fourteen hogsheads of wine. 

 The branches and fruit are remarkably large, and the 

 vines very strong/' 



Bartholomew Rocque, of Walham Green, made wine 

 for thirty years from a vineyard he "had planted in a com- 

 mon field garden ; and although the ground was flat, the 

 wine was as good as that of Orleans or Auxerre. 



" I have known," says Mr. Hanbury, " good wine made 

 of grapes growing in England, and have drunk our Bur- 

 gundy no way inferior, as my taste could find out, to that 

 noted wine which we have constantly imported from that 

 country." 



