THE SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR, 
2o5 
and places prettiet, because they have lived in 
the region ; and verily they have their reward. 
For my own part, I would rather get the popu- 
lation of a village all out to plant trees, and beau- 
tify the walks and avenues of the hamlet, than 
convene them to argue upon abstract notions of 
no possible practical utility We may learn a 
great deal that is good from t'le example of men 
who went before us. If we dislike the faith, at 
all events we may admire the taste, of the 
Churchmen of other days, whose abbeys and 
cloisters all testify to a sound taste, and whose 
noble avenues and orchards proclaim good hus- 
bandry. 
T wish I could set hundreds of men planting 
trees who seem to delight in worse labors. J 
do love trees, and I love the men who planted 
the Elms of New Haven, Newark, and those of 
the sweet village I live in. Why does not every 
mar. plant eut a tree — tiany trees'? In Provi- 
dence there ale some noble Elms which I saw 
planted only twenty years ago 1 A man may see 
the result of his labors, and his children would 
be proud to point out the trees, the old ances- 
tral trees,” of his forefather’s planting. Men 
may rail at the world as much as they please, but 
a is a beautiful one, and if we are only cheerful 
and active iti it, it will become yet more beauti- 
ful. Nearly all the beauty of a residence, a vil- 
lage, a country town, arises from its tr^es ; and 
not only should every man carefully adorn his 
own habitation, but men should club together to 
beautify their vicinage. The strong attachment 
felt by men in England to honaesteads arises in 
no small degree from the pains which have been 
taken to adorn and enrich the.m by a previous 
generation. ****** 
Wishing you all 'uccess in your important un- 
dertaking, 
T am, dear sir, yours, very faithfully. 
To J.S. Skinner, Esq JnO O. ChOULES. 
Domestic Port Wiue. 
The Columbus Enquirer, of a recent date, con- 
tains the following article : 
Port Wine. — Messrs. Editors — With the com- 
pliments of the season, please accept a specimen 
■of Port Wine, made from the Black Uchee, a na- 
tive grape. It is the pure juice ; there is not a 
drop of any kind of spirits or coloring matter 
in it. I flatter myself it resembles Port Wine in 
its purity. Chas. A. Peabody. 
The foregoing note announced an exceedingly 
agreeable lact — and we are sorry to say, that the 
excellent and de’icious Port has by some unac- 
countable process, escaped from the once well 
filled bottle — perhaps by evaporaiion. But it 
matters not how — it i, gone, and he who may 
■have tasted of our friend Peabody’s Wine, will 
■not think it strange that we regret we have not 
many such bott es. Ills really an excellent ar- 
ticle, as all hands in our office are willing to tes- 
tify, from devil doun. 
The editors of the Enquirer say it is really an 
excellent article ; and we have no doubt of it, as 
they say so; for they used to be good judges of 
such things in ” days o’ auld lang syne,” when 
we were all flourishing together in Milledgeville, 
Besi Ics aiding in extending the knowledge of 
Mr. P.’s wine, our object is to suggest whether 
it would not be well for Southern wine-drinkers to 
encourage enterprise which takes this direction. 
It appears to us they should do so If they want a 
good and pure article, instead of the horrible 
rot-gat stuff that is too often sold as foreign 
Wtd iej for the whole of the sand-hill r. gion of 
the Southern States is admirably suited to the 
production of the grape, as was proved years 
ago by McCall, Herbemont, Boykin and others, 
and as may be proved any day by any one who 
will try i^ Indeed, our whole domestic con- J 
sumption, and large quantities for export, might 
be produced in a few years without any very great 
expenditure of effirt. 
It is an enjoyment which we think the most 
rigid temperance man need not find fault with, 
to taste a glass .of such wine as used to be 
made by Herbemont, of So. Ca., McCall, Boy- 
kin, Gordon, Alexander and Harris, of Geor- 
gia, or such as is now made by Sidney Wel- 
ler, of N. C.. and Dr. Neicler, of Ga. ; pure juice 
of the grape, without any admixture of poisonous 
drugs, and without a drop of alcohol, more than 
results naturally from the decomposition of the 
sugar. But such stuff as is often sold to the un- 
suspecting South, for genuine foreign wine 
— faugh what a villainous compound of abom- 
inable drugs. Some years ago we saw a state- 
ment that at Trenton, New Jersey, there was 
an establishment in Vv'hich one hundred lab.irers 
were employed in making champaigne baskets, 
in which champaigne wine, manufactured out of 
Newark Cider, was packed, and shipped off for 
sale in these same blessed Southern States. 
And in the article of Port Wine, especially, is the 
swindling of the South impudent and audacious. 
We have seen it offered confidently as genuine, 
when it was really not much better than hatters’ 
dye tinctured with brandy. And even if we were 
to get the real foreign stuff, we would not be 
much better off, except that we would hive filth 
instead of poison. How exquisitely delightful 
it must be to quaff a glass of an article manufac- 
tured after the following most delectable process : 
[From Kingston’s Lusitaaian .Sketches.] 
How THEY MAKE PoRT WiNE. — The time at 
which the vintage comrr.ences, vaiies in differ- 
ent years about a month — .Tom the early part of 
September to the midd.e of October. At that 
period there are 20,000 Gallegos employed in 
the district, and about 10,000 Portuguese men, 
women and children. As soon as the vintage is 
over, the Spaniards return 1 1 their own homes, 
each man with from 20 to 30 shillings in his 
pocket, which he has received in wages. When 
once the vintage has commenced, time is invalu- 
able. The vineyards are crowded with pers.ms, 
some plucking the sound grapes, and filling large 
hampers with them, otherc separating the rotten 
or dry bunches, v/hi'e the Galleirosare empioyed 
in carrying the baskets down the sleep sides of 
the hills, on their backs. '1 he presses are stone 
tanks, raised high from the fl jor, about two or 
three 'eet dei.’p and from twenty to thirty square. 
A boy stands in the centre, and rakes the grapes 
as they are thrown in so as to form an even sur- 
face; when full, twenty to thirty men, with bare 
feet and legs, jump in, and. to the sound of gui- 
tars, pipes, fiddles, and of their own voices, con- 
tinue dancinff, or rather treading, from forty to 
fifty hours, with six hours intervening between 
every eighteen, till the juice is completely ex- 
pressed, and the skiri ferfectly bruised, so as to 
extract every particle cf color. It is found ne- 
cessary to leave in the stalks, ia order to impart 
that astringent quality so much admi ed in port 
wine, as well as to aid fermentaii an. After the 
men are withdrawn, the juice, the husks and 
stalks are allowed to ferment together from two 
to six days; the husks and stalks then rise to the 
top, and firm a complete cake. By this means 
the color is still further extracted from the shin. 
Lest the lovers of foreign Madii a, after this 
delicious develipment of the sweats of foreign 
Port, may go to crowing over the lovers of the 
latter, we may as well nip the rising exultalon 
in the bud, by giving an account of some of the 
delightfully neat and elean arrangements about 
the manufacture of Madeira. And, if our opi- 
nion in such matters be worth anything, we 
think the Madeira has decidedly the advantage 
over the Port, from the delicious tincture it must 
have, of the perspirations and the scrapings of the 
legsofthe laborers. He;eis Lieut. WiLKss’sac- 
count of the matter. We c- py from vol. 1, page 
21, of the Narrative of the U. S. Exploring Ex- 
pedition : 
A friend of our Consul was obliging enough 
to .show us his wo ks, affd the machinery for.'x- 
pressing the juice from the grape. It v’as in a 
rude sort of shed. On our approach we h. ard a 
sort of song, with'a continued thumping, and on 
entering, saw six men stamping ridentlvin a 
vat of 6 feet square by 2 feet deep, three on each 
side of a huge lever beam, their legs bare tip to 
ihe thighs. On our entrance they redoubled 
their exertions till the perspiration ffirly poured 
from them ; the vat had been filled with grapes, 
and by their exertions we were enabled to see the 
whole process. After the grapes had been suffi- 
ciently stamped, and the men’s legs well scraped, 
the pulp was made into the shape of a large bee- 
hive,” &c. &c. 
Anticipations. 
We take the following extract from the West- 
minster Review of September last, as going to 
show what sober, matter-of-fact Englishmen an- 
ticipate from the application of science to agri- 
culture. Only think of a proposition, made in 
sober earnest, to warm the ground by means of 
steam or hot water 1 And next, to enrich it by 
filling the pores of the soil, by means of machi- 
nery, with the essence of those manures that 
are known to be the best sustainers of vegeta- 
ble life. The whole proposition savors so strong- 
ly of extravagance, that w§ would not have ven- 
tured to mention it to our readers, had we not as 
authority for it, .so respectable a work as the 
Westminster Review. 
Unless a succession of bod harvests intervene 
to check prosperity, the year 1850 will behold the 
extinction of horses as a moving power in Eno"- 
land, for the purposes of pecuniary gain in the 
public transpoit of passengers and'goods Ev- 
ery new street, every village, every farm will 
have its railway, and stationary power will have 
become so common in its numerous applications, 
that it will be turned bn and off for the purposes 
of bandage as easi y as gas jets for the purpose 
of liqhting. And the modes of its application 
will be manifold. Beyond the mere purposes of 
traction, there are other important problems to 
workout. There is an important process to be 
aihiev d in English agriculture, which seems 
not yet to have entered into the imagination of 
any of our improvers. The reason seems to be 
ffiat our chemists are not mechanicians, nor are 
our mechanicians chemists ; but be it as it may, 
we have never yet seen the matter ptoposed, and 
possibly may run the lisk ofbeing deemed mere 
visionary enthusiasts for propounding it. 
^ et in sober earnestness we pronose to convey 
artificial heat beneath the earth, on open land, 
SI as ’o maintain the temperature suited to the' 
growth and development of the vegetable tribes, 
by means of pipes of metal or earthenware; cir-^ 
dilating steam, or hot water, or air, from a close 
boiler or stove. These pipes are to be laid at 
depths of .from four to five feet, in the manner of 
deep draining. Also, by a similar process to in- 
ject tlie ground v/ith gaseous manure, as ammo- 
nia and carbon, so that the heat and gases may 
be constantly ascending towards the surface, and 
thus be absorbed by the roots of the plants. 
By our calculations the consumption of two 
tons of coals per acre per annum will supply 
heat for the production of green crops throuoh- 
out the year, and probably coal will be delivered 
a’ong lines of railway at an average of eight 
shillings per ton. Along lines of atmospheric 
railway the stationary engines would supply the 
s'eam or hot water, and we shall vet see the time 
when rails will be laid along the surface of our 
ff Ids, whereon cylinder harrows will traverse, 
driven by- the same stationary power, to break 
the soil into fragments fit for the growth of 
plants. Nor is thisanificial warming of the sub- 
til a mere theory. In some parts'of Saxony 
tne heat arising from burning coal mines below 
so tempers the soil above that snow never lies 
upon it, and crops are produced throush the 
whole winter. 
We have no doubt that, by the process we 
have described, the germinating of spring crops 
might b ■ hastened, gardens preserved in verdure 
during winter, and crops of grass and veo-etables 
furnished throughout the year. ° 
The linn. . I C (tALHOU.v. has been anpoinleil to 
deliver ihe ne.xl Annual Address bef ire ihe Souil, Car- 
plina ■‘’me .^gricullnial iSociety, 
