* SIZE OF THE VINE. 



the soil of that country producing vines of prodigious growth. 

 Another vine is mentioned by Strabo, who lived in the reign of 

 Augustus, as growing in Margiana, which was twelve feet in 

 circumference, who also states, that the vines there produced 

 bunches of grapes two cubits or a yard in length. At Ecoan, 

 near Paris, the seat of the late Duke of Montmorency is a 

 table which we are assured was made from the body of a single 

 vine. 



Olearius affirms that he found many vines near the Caspian 

 Sea whose trunks were as big as a man ; and on the Barbary 

 coast vines are now growing of surprising dimensions, some 

 of them having trunks eight or nine feet in circumference. 

 There was a vine at Besanqon, in France, which died in 1793, 

 that had a trunk one metre and eight decimetres in diameter. 

 But what renders these facts the more astonishing is, that a 

 tree or vine, which grows in such a wreathed or twisted man- 

 ner, more like a rope than like timber, and needing the sup- 

 port of others, should attain to such a bulk and firm consis- 

 tence. It is not, however, to be expected that vines frequently 

 pruned and dressed will pften attain to such great dimensions, 

 as the vigour of the stock is by such means transfused into the 

 branches, and exhausted in the production of fruit. Such ex- 

 traordinary dimensions and such great age are not to be 

 looked for in cold and incongenial climes ; although instances 

 have occurred in England, and other northern climates, where 

 being placed in a genial soil and situation, they have attained 

 to an amazing size and expansion. 



.Size of the bunches and berries, 



Almost incredible as the magnitude to which the vine has 

 attained in some cases, may appear, it will doubtless equally 

 amaze some persons to know the size to which its bunches and 

 fruit have arrived. We have accounts of fruit and clusters 

 of such extraordinary size as to appear incredible to our usual 

 conception of grapes. We learn from Heutius that in Crete, 

 Chios, and other islands in the Archipelago, the vines afford 



