371 
1847 THE CULTIVATOR. 
land than is to be found in most parts of England. In 
many parts there is a want of that neatness and care 
which so generally prevails in England. Still most of 
the land is under a very fair state of cultivation, and 
many of the tenant farmers are wealthy, and have as 
many comforts and conveniences as can be found in any 
part of the kingdom. H. 
RURAL NOTICES ABROAD— By Ik. Marvel. 
Wines of France, (Continued.)— Champagnes — 
The town of Epernay is near the centre of that district 
which furnishes the Champagne wines. The soil rests 
generally upon lime stone, and is in many parts but a 
loose marl. 
The high road from Paris to Metz, (east by north 
from the capital,) passes through many of the esteemed 
vineyards. Toward Rheims, ]s the high country where 
is made most of the red wine, (vins de la montagne.) 
The system of cultivation is the same that obtains 
in other vineyards. The grape from which is made 
the best known sorts, along the Marne, is small and 
exceedingly sweet, and very much affected in product 
by the season. The vintage is later by a fortnight or 
more than in other vineyards. The bottling takes 
place in the spring following the vintage; and the 
sweet taste possessed by most champagnes^ is given by 
the addition of sugar dissolved in wine. If this liqueur 
or syrup be formed of red wine, it gives the pink tinge 
belonging to so called pink champagne. The taste of 
the wines is very much altered, and not unfrequently 
much improved, by judicious'mixtures. More or less 
of liqueur is added, as the vintage may be intended for 
home or foreign consumption—for the Russian or Eng¬ 
lish market. 
Every season has its own reputation as producer of 
good or bad wine. Hence the favorite date of 1842, 
known over. Europe as a superior year; And it is pro¬ 
bable that the wine of 1842 will last for a century to 
come. Nor is there a system of counterfeiting in date 
only, but also in name. A tenth part of all the cham¬ 
pagne made is lost annually by breakage. It is need¬ 
less to say that the Toss is more than made up by 
sweetening and carbonating the cheaper white wines 
of France, and the stocks of the Rhine. 
A company of large capital exists in Paris for mak¬ 
ing Champagne from the poorest Chablis. It is sweet¬ 
ened, charged with gas, bottled, labelled, and ready 
for market in an hour after leaving its quiescent state 
of vin ordinaire. The drink, however, is palatable— 
vinous—effervescing—bears a good price—is slightly 
intoxicating—does not cloy the appetite, and so an¬ 
swers all the ends of all those tavern keepers and 
tavern loungers who are both honest and ignorant. 
Nor is this all of counterfeiting. Champagne, or 
what passes for Champagne, is also made from apples, 
and gooseberries, and beets, and I know not what be¬ 
side ; so that the chances of procuring in one of our 
western inns, a bottle which has actually lain in the 
chalk cellars of Epernay, and been tilted day after 
day by the wine watchers of Madame Cliquet, and dis¬ 
gorged of sediment, and refilled, and flavored, and new 
corked, and escaped the season of bursting, and the 
English merchant, and the French trader, and the Rus¬ 
sian prince, and the German landlord—are almost in¬ 
finitesimal. 
Some idea may be formed of the extent of the vine¬ 
yards, from the fact that a single proprietor expends 
$25,000 a year for corks alone. Tim annual average 
product of all the vineyards in the Champagne district, 
»s fifty millions of bottles.. Of this number, nearly half 
goes every year to Russia; England has of course a 
lion’s share; Germany boasts of nearly as much; there 
is plenty to be found in Italy—as much more at Mad¬ 
rid; the French drink of course occasionally, and 
America and the Indies are noway behind the others 
in claim. 
Vineyards of the Rhine. —There are very pretty 
stories told by many of the tourists, of the vineyards 
along the Rhine;—of baskets filled with earth, lodged 
in crevices of the rocky banks—which baskets of earth 
nourish vines that trail their purple clusters all down 
the cliffs. Such stories are to be taken with some ex¬ 
ceptions. There are, indeed, here and there upon the 
west bank, little shelves of rock, where earth is scanty, 
and wuere more has been deposited, and retained in its 
place by pikes of wood, interlaced sometimes with 
osier, and there grows on them a' short stumpy vine, 
close trimmed, and bearing not many clusters, or large, 
but fruit yielding superior wine. Nor is it because the 
banks of the-Rhine are so valuable agriculturally, that 
this care is taken of a little soil. I had expected, in¬ 
deed, from the stories I had heard, to see every foot 
garnished with well repaying toil; but instead, were 
acres and acres .almost waste, or fed upon by scraggy- 
limbed cows, or goats, and half covered with brush. 
These banks too sloped to the water, but unfortunately 
did not possess that particular exposure, or quality of 
soil, requisite to make the wine; and a single foot of 
that so cautiously cherished under oiie cliff, might be 
worth an acre on the opposite bank. 
I do not object to the basket stories that they lack 
interest, or, indeed, have not enough of plausibility— 
but that they give an incorrect agricultural idea of 
the country. 
The vine culture is much the same in Germany as in 
France. Particular localities furnish a choice vintage, 
and an adjoining field furnishes a worthless crop. The 
best wines are grown upon the immediate banks of the 
river;—the most noticeable vineyards are perhaps those 
upon the rocks opposite Remagen, and at Assman- 
shanson. They are found upon ledges, of but a few 
feet in width, and on the precipices opposite Remagen 
are in fact sustained in their crevices by osier work 
alone. 
The vintage is later than in France, frequently so 
late as in November. The famous vineyard of Johan- 
nisberg is in full view of the river—a slaty yellowish 
soil, with vines of yellow sickly color. Its extent is 
only 62 acres, and it is attended with the utmost care. 
Its product, in good years, is 50,000 bottles—valued 
at.nearly as many dollars! I need hardly say that it 
is the wine of princes and noble families;—that even 
the smallest quantity of the most indifferent vintage 
rarely finds its way into the market. The absurdity, 
therefore, of those small tavern keepers who put Joan- 
nisberg on their wine bills is only less pitiable than the 
ignorance of those who order it. 
Rust in Wheat. —The Maine Farmer doubts that 
fungi are the cause of rust in wheat. He thinks the 
epidermis bursts, the sap runs out, and the seeds of 
the fungi then lodge in it and grow. The use of a 
powerful achromatic microscope would convince him 
that this opinion is error; for by it the clear, distinct, 
and regularly formed fungus plants are not only seen, 
but their thickly crowded, rounded heads are most 
clearly discovered through the transparent coat, while 
it is swelling upward from the pressure of their growth, 
and before it has burst open. 
Preparing for Wheat. —Recent experiments in¬ 
dicate, that instead of plowing three times for wheat, 
as is usual with summer fallows, it is much better to 
plow but once; provided the work is done in the best 
mannerj that is, very deep, and with very narrow 
slices. The time when this work is done is not essen¬ 
tial—the cultivator is used solely for clearing the 
weeds and covering the seed. The success has been 
complete—but it may not be so well adapted to clays. 
