238 
VITIS VINIPERA. 
taining five seeds, but more generally only two, which are hard, and 
irregular in their form. The flowers appear in June and July. From 
the effects of culture, and difi'erence of soil and cHmate, numerous 
varieties of grapes are produced, diff'ering very much in shape, co- 
lour, size and taste, and affording, as it is well known, a very great 
variety of wines. That which is called the Alexandrian Frontiniac 
yields the best grapes for eating, and the Syrian the largest bunches. 
In some of the islands of the Greek Archipelago, grapes are found 
weighing from thirty to forty pounds the bunch. The Syrian grape 
in this country has produced bunches weighing nineteen or twenty 
pounds ; and there is a grape cultivated in Madeira as a dessert fruit, 
the clusters of which sometimes weigh twenty pounds. 
Qualities of Grapes. The unripe fruit has a harsh, rough, 
sour taste ; but when recent, and fully ripe, it has an agreeable, 
cooling, sweet, subacid taste. It contains water, sugar, mucilage, 
jelly, albumen, gluten, tannin, super-tartrate of potass, tartrate of 
lime, phosphate of magnesia, muriate of soda, sulphate of potass, 
and tartaric, citric, and malic acids ; besides a raucoso-saccharine 
principle, on which, according to Chaptal and Proust, the fermenta- 
tive process in bruised grapes depends. 
Medical Properties and Uses. Vine leaves called pam- 
pini, and the tendrils or capreoli, have an astringent taste, and were 
formerly used in diarrhoeas, hemorrhages, and other disorders re- 
quiring refrigerant and styptic medicines. The juice or sap of the 
vine, called lachryma, has been recommended in calculous disorders, 
and as an application to weak eyes, and specks on the cornea ; the 
expressed juice of the unripe fruit, called verjuice, was much 
esteemed by the ancients, but the use of it is now superseded by 
lemon juice ; verjuice however, is still employed on the continent, 
as an external application in bruises and sprains, and is considered 
very useful. The dried fruit, or uvce passes of the pharmacopoeias, 
was formerly distinguished into majores and minores, raisins and 
currants ; the latter is a variety of the former, being the fruit of the 
Vitis Corinthiaca Seuapyrena. Raisins are made from the varieties 
named the black raisin grape, and the white raisin grape. 
There are two methods of curing them ; either by cutting the stalk 
of the bunches half through, when the grapes are nearly ripe, and 
leaving them on the vine until their watery part is evaporated, and 
the sun dries and candies them ; or by gathering the grapes when 
ripe, and dipping them in a ley made of the ashes of the burnt 
tendrils, after which they are dried in the sun ; those cured in the 
first manner are considered the best. Raisins difl'er from grapes 
chiefly in the quantity of saccharine matter being greater ; they are 
