310 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Oct. 



in the road, the inspectors need only to take a 

 handful or two of these stones, to fill it up imme- 

 diately." 



At Dijon he saw several vines trained up to the 

 second story window of a house, and very heavily 

 laden with grapes. These vines wei-e planted so 

 near the house that the wall would rest upon one- 

 half the roots, while the other half were covered 

 by the heavy stones of the old pavement. So a 

 vine of a ceitain age may live and flourish, with- 

 out having the ground loosened about its roots. 

 The vines were large and healthy looking. "When 

 I return home," he adds, "I will try this with vines 

 of different ages. If it should succeed it would be 

 a great economy, and the grapes resting on stone 

 would be clean, and could not impart a ground 

 taste to the wine." 



He visited, in company with Prof. Ladrey, edi- 

 tor of a monthly magazine on the culture of the 

 vine, the botanical garden supported by the city 

 of Dijon, in which amongst other things, he found 

 six hundred varieties of the vine, among which 

 were the Catawba, the Isabella and the Scrapanay, 

 from this country. 



At Gevrey, a village near Chamberlin, the rent 

 of five acres of land for planting a vineyard, was 

 found to be $50 or $60 a year for twenty or thirty 

 years. If already planted with vines, the rent was 

 from $70 to $100 the five acres. 



First class Pirean vineyards were worth from 

 $320 to $480 an acre ; second class from $240 to 

 $320 ; and first class Gamai vineyards the same. 

 Second class Gamai from $120 to $200. 



The prices of wines were very variable. Wine 

 of the vintage of 1846, from the best vineyards, 

 brought $400, to $600, or even $800 a hhd. of 60 

 gallons. A hogshead of the first class of common 

 wines was worth from $200 to $300, second class 

 from $100 to $200, and poorer wines still lower. 

 Most of these are red wines. 



In the making of wine, when it is deficient in 

 eaccharine matter, sugar, made of potatoes, is ad- 

 ded during the fermentation — sometimes to the 

 amount of 30 pounds to the hogshead. 



It may serve to recommend the wine of this re- 

 gion to be told that the way by which the fermen- 

 tation in the vats is kept up is by sending several 

 men, perfectly naked, into the vats, who, by vigo- 

 rous exercise with feet and hands, keep warm 

 enough to raise the heat to the proper degree and 

 continue the fermentation. 



The wine, when drawn off" into hogsheads, after 

 the delicate process of fermentation, is kept in cel- 

 lars, some of which are forty or even sixty feet be- 

 low the surface. Some cellars at this depth are 

 capable of holding 12,000 hogsheads, of 60 gal- 

 Ions each. Cellars were visited which were lined 

 with casks, three or four hundred years old, con- 

 taining 2400 gallons each. 



Full accounts are given of the various modes of 

 planting and after-management of the vines from 

 which the finest and most celebrated Burgundy 

 wines are made. The usual wages for working an 

 acre of vineyard are from sixteen to twenty dollars 

 a year. 



Vineyards in which the grapes are not carefully 

 sorted, but thrown in indiscriminately, good and 

 bad together, as the makers of cider often allow, 

 uniformly produce wine of an inferior quality and 

 of low price. 



From Dijon, back to Paris and thence through 



Cologne to Coblentz, to visit the vineyards on the 

 Rhine. At Hockheim he examined the establish- 

 ment for the imitation, w'hich is very successful, of 

 the sparkling champagnes. Some of the imita- 

 tions are better than that of the brands taken for 

 imitation. 



The process of gathering and making the Hock- 

 heim wines is given. They are put into casks con- 

 taining from 250 gallons to 5000. "The first year 

 the wine is drawn off' into new barrels (casks) four 

 or five times." "In the second year, twice will be 

 sufficient ; in the third year, once ; then, once in 

 two years ; and, after that, it may remain in the 

 same barrel until it is bottled." The greatest care 

 should be taken never to leave a vacant space in 

 any barrell holding wine. As our host quaintly 

 said, "you should sooner forget to kiss your wife, 

 on returning home, than to leave a vacancy in 

 your barrel." This wine sells for from $200 to 

 $1200 per cask of 250 gallons. It is made of the 

 Riesling grape, the vines of which must be planted 

 at the distance of three and a half feet apart. E. 



HOW TO PKESERVB HEALTH IN" HOT 



WEATHER. 



We remember no summer during which there 

 was not promulgated, from some source or other, 

 an infallible recipe, as it is usually claimed, for 

 the preservation of health. But the following 

 suggestions from the Philadelphia North American 

 seem to possess the merit of common sense, and 

 a compliance with their terms will certainly be 

 inexpensive. We commend them to our readers : 



First. Be always occupied, and in the open air 

 if possible, but not in the sun. 



Second. Drink ice-water freely at meals, but 

 rarely or never at oiher times. Many people de- 

 stroy the tone of the stomach, and bring on all 

 sorts of diseases, by drinking to excess of ice- 

 water. 



Third. Eat full and ample meals of light food, 

 finishing with fruit deserts, melons included, but 

 don't eat lunches. 



Fourth. Don't sit down to lounge and sleep in 

 the day time, unless you have a regular hour of 

 sleep after dinner — a thing tolerable with old gen- 

 tlemen, but not with young men. 



Fifth. Be cheerful as well as active ; stir up 

 your friends as well as yourself with jokes and 

 jibes. 



Sixth. Keep a bottle of some one of the dozen 

 good preparations of mixed astringents and ton- 

 ics, which any good apothecary or physician can 

 name to you, always at hand, using a very little 

 of it to check stomachic derangement at the very 

 minute it begins. 



Singular Discovery of Antiquities near 

 Athens. — A letter just received in Paris gives 

 the following account of the discovery near Ath- 

 ens, by pure accident, of some very interesting 

 monuments : 



A small proprietor amusing himself after the 

 fashion of his kind in digging up his own potatoes, 

 came on something hard. He tried to dig it up, 

 but found it was a fixture. He cleared a part of 

 it, and saw it was the wall of a building ; he ex- 

 amined the wall and found there was an inscrip- 

 tion on it, which, as he could not read, gave him 

 no great insight into his discovery. He, howev- 

 er, consulted his friends ; further excavations were 



