72 
ORIGIN OF DOMESTIC PLANTS. 
Origin of Domestic Plants. 
One of the most important, and, at the same time, most 
difficult questions connected with our subject is: how far we 
are to regard our cereal grains, our esculent bulbs and roots, 
and the multiplied tree fruits of our gardens, as artificially 
to be animal, not vegetable, and he ascribes their multiplication to exces¬ 
sive manuring and stimulation of the growth of the plants on which 
they live. They are now generally, if not universally, regarded* as vegeta¬ 
ble, and if they are so, Babinet’s theory would be even more plausible than 
on his own supposition .—Etudes et Lectures , ii, p. 269. 
It is a fact of some interest in agricultural economy, that the oidium, 
which is so destructive to the grape, has produced no pecuniary loss to the 
proprietors of the vineyards in France. “ The price of wine,” says La- 
vergne, “has quintupled, and as the product of the vintage has not dimin¬ 
ished in the same proportion, the crisis has been, on the whole, rather ad¬ 
vantageous than detrimental to the country .”—Economic Rurale de la 
France , pp. 263, 264. 
France produces a considerable surplus of wines for exportation, and 
the sales to foreign consumers are the principal source of profit to French 
vinegrowers. In Northern Italy, on the contrary, which exports little 
wine, there has been no such increase in the price of wine as to compen¬ 
sate the great diminution in the yield of the vines, and the loss of this har¬ 
vest is severely felt. In Sicily, however, which exports much wine, prices 
have risen as rapidly as in France. Waltershausen informs us that in the 
years 1838-42, the red wine of Mount Etna sold at the rate of one 
kreazer and a half, or one cent the bottle, and sometimes even at but two 
thirds that price, but that at present it commands five or six times as 
much. 
The grape disease has operated severely on small cultivators whose 
vineyards only furnished a supply for domestic use, but Sicily has received 
a compensation in the immense increase which it has occasioned in both 
the product and the profits of the sulphur mines. Flour of sulphur is ap¬ 
plied to the vine as a remedy against the disease, and the operation is 
repeated from two to three or four—and even, it is said, eight or ten times, 
in a season. Hence there is a great demand for sulphur in all the vine¬ 
growing countries of Europe, and Waltershausen estimates the annual 
consumption of that mineral for this single purpose at 850,000 centner , or 
more than forty thousand tons. The price of sulphur has risen in about 
the same proportion as that of wine.— Waltershattsen, Ueber den Sicil- 
ianiscJicn Ackerbau , pp. 19, 20. 
