264 Remarks on the principal Rocks 
The paramount influence of the constituents of the 
soil of a vineyard on the quality of the wine produced is 
well known. In some of the best wine districts of France it 
is no uncommon occurrence to find two adjacent vineyards 
both planted with the same kinds of vine, similarly cultivated, 
and where all the operations of the vintage are conducted in 
precisely the same manner, and yet the wine of one of these 
vineyards remains totally distinct as regards quality and _ 
flavour from the wine of the other; such variations being 
entirely due to differences in the soils of the respective vine- 
yards. It is also known that the application of certain kinds 
of manure to vines will cause serious deterioration in the 
quality and flavour of the wine produced in the following 
season; and sometimes the pristine quality and flavour cannot 
be regained for several vintages. The composition therefore 
of any rock whose disintegration has formed the soil of any 
vineyard must obviously exercise a most important influence 
on the quality of the wine derived from the vineyard. Now 
according to the best authorities I have been able to refer to, 
the disintegration of clay slate produces a soil of unusual 
excellence for vineyards. . Thus, Dr. Adams in his remarks on 
the rocks and soils of the celebrated Constantia Vineyard at 
the Cape of Good Hope, has observed how well the vines 
thrive in a soil produced by the decomposition of clay slate 
and mixed with the fragments of it. 
Humboldt has stated that the vines of the schistose ranges, 
in the valley of the Rhine, produce most excellent wine ; and 
I am aware that the best wines of the province of Anjou, in 
France, are obtained from vines grown on the same formation. 
Albertus Magnus has also observed that the vine thrives un- 
commonly well in earth mixed with fragments of slate. 
Some of the clay slates and schists near Melbourne are 
accompanied by a fertile soil adapted for ordinary agriculture 
or vine culture; but more generally the schistose ranges in 
the basin of the Yarra, eastward of its tributary the Plenty, 
are not sufficiently accessible to be available for ordinary crops, 
and are sometimes very barren. But I have occasionally 
encountered within twenty-five miles of Melbourne, ranges 
of dark clay slate that have furnished by disintegration. soil 
now only supporting a dense stringy-bark forest, yet which 
seems to me to be of the same nature as the soil of the cele- 
brated vineyards on the dark-coloured schists of the Rhenish 
Mountains. 
Very few of the vineyards of the counties of Cumberland 
and Camden, in New South Wales, have been established on 
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