On the Cultivation of the Vine, 8£c* 
m 
No. 17 . 
[The valuable information contained in this treatise on the culti- 
vation of the vine, &c. must render it highly important to those per- 
sons who are inclined to pursue the subject in the United States. 
It will occupy some part of the subsequent numbers of the present 
volume of the Emporium.] Ed. 
A Tr eatise on the Cultivation of the Vine, and the Me- 
thod of making Wines . By C. Chaptal.* 
There are few natural productions employed by man 
as aliment, wliicli lie lias not altered or modified by pre- 
parations wliich remove tliem from their primitive state. 
Corn, fiesh, and fruits, are all subjected to a commence- 
ment of fermentation before they are used as nourish- 
ment ; and peculiar qualities are given even to objects of 
luxury, caprice, or whim, such as tobacco and perfumes. 
But it is in the fabrication of liquors in particular that 
man has displayed the greatest sagacity : all are the 
work of his own creation, water and milk excepted. Na- 
ture never furnishes spirituous liquors : it suffers the 
grapes to rot on the stems, while art converts the juice 
into an agreeable, tonic, and nourishing liquor called 
wine. 
It is difficult to ascertain the precise period when man- 
kind began to make wine. This valuable discovery 
seems to he lost in the darkness of antiquity, and the ori- 
gin of wine has its fables, like all other things which 
have become objects of general utility. f 
s Tilloch, vol. 9. p. 21. From Cours d’ Agriculture de Rozier, vol. 10. 
j- Two or three pages are here omitted, which are merely speculations on the 
origin of wine, he. derived chiefly from the ancients. Ed. 
