OF THE VINE. 



53 



and therefore, I would not advise the joining this 

 coarse sort to any other except the following, as in 



" Our fruits, as well as our animals, are always found some- 

 where in a natural state, and so we read of wild Grapes in Syria, 

 Isaiah, v. 4. including Palestine, or the Land of Canaan, in 

 Syria, as we are authorised to do. 



" The Vine, however, soon became an object of improve- 

 ment and cultivation, since Noah, after the Flood, planted a 

 Vineyard, Gen, ix. 20. and is from thence supposed, by several 

 learned men, to be the Bacchus of the Greeks, and Janus of the 

 Latins ; the name of this latter being derived from an oriental 

 word, signifying wine. 



" This part of the world produced anciently, both large 

 grapes and large bunches ; for when the twelve spies were sent 

 by Moses, then in the Desert or Wilderness, to view and re- 

 connoitre the southern parts of the land of Canaan, they came 

 unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch 

 with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two, upon 

 a staff. Num. xiii. 23. How large the branch, cut with the 

 cluster, might be, is not known; and, perhaps, .this mode of 

 carrying might be owing not so much to the weight of the 

 branch and its cluster (since one man could very well carry 

 both, though they should weigh 40 or 50 lbs.) as that the cluster 

 being to be exhibited and shown to the people on their return, 

 it was necessary to/ preserve the fruit fair, whole, .and unbruised : 

 however, it is to be presumed, that the cluster was singularly 

 large and fine, the tenor of the narration evidently implying 

 that. 



" But as to the largeness of the bunches in this quarter of 

 the world, Strabo, who lived in the reign of Augustus, testifies, 

 that the Vines in Margiana and other places were so big, that 

 two men could scarcely compass them with their arms, and 

 that they produced bunches of grapes two cubits or a yard long, 

 which is more than a foot longer than that vast bunch produced 

 by his Grace the Duke of Portland at Welbeck. 



E 3 



