184 



ON THE AGE AND 



The Vine, however, when planted in a soil it 

 delights in will grow to an amazing size and ex- 



almost impossible to enumerate all the articles, either of the 

 animal or the vegetable reign, which were successively imported 

 into Europe from Asia and Egypt * ; but it will not be unworthy 

 of the dignity, and much less of the utility of an historical 

 work, slightly to touch on a few of the principal heads. 



" 1st. Almost all the flowers, the herbs, and the fruits, that 

 grow in our European gardens, are of foreign extraction, 

 which, in many cases, is betrayed, even by their names : the 

 apple was native of Italy, and when the Romans had tasted the 

 richer flavour of the apricot, the peach, the pomegranate, the 

 citron, and the orange, they contented themselves with applying 

 to all these new fruits the common denomination of apple, dis- 

 criminating them from each other by the additional epithet of 

 their country. 



" 2d. In the time of Homer, the Vine grew wild in the island 

 of Sicily, and, probably, in the adjacent continent ; but it was 

 not improved by skill, nor did it afford a liquor grateful to the 

 taste of the savage inhabitants, f A thousand years afterwards, 

 Italy could boast, that of the fourscore most generous and cele- 

 brated wines more than two-thirds were produced from her own 

 soil. J The blessing was soon communicated to the Narbonnese 

 province of Gaul; but so intense was the cold to the north of 

 the Cevennes, that, in the time of Strabo, it was thought im- 

 possible to ripen the grapes in those parts of Gaul. § This 



* It is not improbable that the Greeks and Phoenicians intro- 

 duced some neiv arts and productions into the neighbourhood of 

 Marseilles and Gades* 



f See Homer Odyss. lib. xiv. ver. 358. 



X Plin. Hist. Natur, lib. xiv. 



§ Strab. Geog. lib. iv. p. 223. The intense cold of a Gallic 

 winter tvas almost proverbial among the ancients. 



