Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: even to have been experts in Grape growing, and fond of experiment, though not free from superstition in some of their practices. Among other feats which they are said to have performed was one which has lately been revived as a secret. This was to produce black and white Grapes on the same cluster, and which they accomplished ' by taking a slip of the white and of the purple Grape, and, having split them down the middle, carefully fitting the halves to their opposites so that the buds when divided should meet. They were then bound together with Papyrus. thread, and placed in the earth in a Sea Onion, the juice of which aided the combination of the severed parts.' They seem also to have been quite as particular as our modern Grape growers in the selection of sites for their Vineyards, and in preparing the ground, which they trenched over, throwing the soil into lofty ridges and exposing it to the action of the air, and in this condition it was left for a whole year before planting. From Greece, the Grape found its way into Italy, Spain, and France, its distribution being aided by the Romans in their conquests westward, and its culture, as a branch of husbandry, rose in the course of time to be of national importance in these countries. It is supposed to have been introduced into Britain by the Romans about the second century, while others suppose it to have been imported much earlier, but not to have been cultivated until the Romans set the example.About the third century, Vineyards were planted in the most favourable parts of the country, and, as civilization progressed, these became more common, and were cultivated more or less successfully for the production of wine. and other purposes up till, or near the time of, the Reformation. The Vine does not appear, however, to have flo...
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