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advantage from the -1° to 51° of northern latitude; but 
with respect to the latter, though it prefers such as is 
light and gravelly, it will grow almost on any soil; nay, 
we are told by the poet that 
<* Leanest land supplies the richest wine.” 
It is a tree of amazing longevity, even superior to 
that of the oak itself, and is in a condition to bear fruit 
many hundred years. Its wood is very durable, and its 
stem sometimes attains a considerable bulk. The great 
doors of the cathedral of Ravenna are made of vine 
planks. 
The magnificent clusters of beautiful fruit which 
adorn its branches are the produce of a remarkably 
small insignificant flower, which possesses, however, in a 
considerable degree, the redeeming quality of fragrance; 
a quality for which Lord Bacon greatly commends it. 
“ Next to the violet,” says he, “ is the musk rose; then 
the strawberry leaves dying, with a most excellent cor¬ 
dial smell; then the flower of the vine,— it is a little 
dust, like the dust of a bent, which grows upon the 
cluster in the first coming forth.” But we can adduce 
far higher authority than his in praise of the perfume of 
this little flower: he who “ spake of trees, from the cedar 
