PROCEEDINGS OF THE HORTICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 685 



first taught them the art of making wine, iu reward for which they elevated 

 him to the rank of a deity; the gathering of the vintage was with them a 

 season of Bacchic enthusiasm and excess. 



The Egyptians ascribed the invention of wine to Osiris, and held the 

 vine sacred to him. 



The Romans extensively cultivated the vine, using wine at first only in 

 the service of the Gods, but when it became more abundant, it was more 

 freely partaken of, by men, yet for a long series of years it was forbidden 

 young men under thirty, and to women all their lifetime to drink wiue. 



It is related that a Roman having caught his wife drinking wine out of 

 a wine cask, killed her with a cudgel, and being tried before Romulus, was 

 acquitted, it being considered justifiable homicide. It is also related of 

 anotheT Roman lady that she was starved to death by her own kinsfolk fov 

 merely opening a closet in which were kept the keys of the wine cellar. 

 Cato records that the custom of kinsfolk kissing women when they met, 

 was to detect by their breath if they had been drinking wine. Plato says 

 that " nothing more excellent or valuable than wiue was ever granted by 

 God to man." , 



Permit me to remark that red wine does not appear to have been in favor 

 with Solomon, for he expressly advises us not to " look upon the wine when 

 it is red, when it sparkles in the cup." This would seem to indicate that 

 the still white wines were most approved by him, and I must say that 1 

 admire his taste. Of one thing we are certain, that the Syrian grape of 

 this date is of a, light color, and makes a delicious wine. It is in all pro- 

 bability the grape of Eschol as it produces the largest bunches of any 

 variety known, having been grown in vineries to produce bunches of nine- 

 teen pounds weight. V 



The elm was much valued by the Greeks, for its shade, and for its use 

 in supporting their grape vines, and this has given rise to numerous allu- 

 sions to the elm by the poets. When Vertumnus is recommending matri- 

 mony to Pomona, Ovid makes him sa}': 



"If that fair elm," he cried, "alone should stand. 

 No grapes would glow with gold and tempt the hand; 

 Or if that vino without her elm should grow, 

 'Twould (jreep a poor neglected shrub below." 



Among the Greeks and Romans all trees which did not produce food or 

 fruit fit for the use of man, were devoted to the infernal gods, and were 

 considered as funereal trees; hence Achilles raised a monument to the father 

 of Andromache in the midst of a grove of elms, and Ovid tells us that 

 when Orpheus returned from the infernal regions, his lamentations for 

 Eurydice were so pathetic, that the earth opened, and the elm and similar 

 trees sprang up to give him shade. 



The poplar was consecrated to Hercules, because he destroyed Cacus in 

 a cavern adjoining Mt. Aventinus, which was covered with these trees, and 

 as a token of his victory, bound his brows with a branch of the whito 

 poplar. When returning from tlie infernal regions, he wore a wreath of 

 the same on his head, and the fable says that from this the Abele or silver 

 leaved poplar came, because the perspiration from his bruw made the inner 



