70 CULTURE OF THE GRAPE. 



and cuttings of upward of a hundred varieties were carried 

 out to the colony for general distribution, in the year 1832, 

 by JAMES BUSBY, Esq., now British President at New Zealand ; 

 from several of the first vineyards of France. 



" The success of this branch of cultivation is of incalculable 

 importance to New South Wales ; not so much, indeed, in a 

 commercial or agricultural, as in a moral respect. 



" The raising of an article in the shape of colonial wine, fit 

 for the home or India market, is doubtless of consequence to 

 the colony in a mercantile point of view ; and the annual 

 saving that would accrue from the manufacture of a whole- 

 some and cheap beverage, that would gradually obviate the 

 necessity for importing European and Cape wine, is of still 

 greater moment. 



" But the gradual diminution of the consumption of ardent 

 spirits within the colony, which would in all likelihood be the 

 eventual result, would, without doubt, be a blessing of far 

 greater, and of inestimable magnitude to the whole colonial 

 population. It is a fact well ascertained, that the population 

 of wine-growing countries are not addicted to the brutalizing 

 vice of drunkenness, like the inhabitants of colder latitudes ; 

 and there is reason to hope, therefore, that if the population 

 of New South Wales could by any means be converted into a 

 vine-growing population, they would, in due time, become a 

 wine-drinking, and comparatively temperate, instead of a 

 rum-drinking and most outrageously intemperate population." 



PRODUCT OF THE VINE IN FRANCE. 



To those who are not aware of the value of this product in 

 wine countries, the following statistics from Mr. BEDDING'S 

 work, before referred to, may be found instructive. It will 

 be perceived, that the grape crop of France, like the cotton 

 crop of our own country, is the most valuable of all others 

 for export. 



" France is the vineyard of the earth. There are few de- 



