A History And Description Of Modern Wine Book

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This is an OCR edition with typos.
Excerpt from book:
[Different Modes of Training the Vine.] CHAPTER II. OF THE VINE, ORIGIN AND VARIETIES OF THE VINE—THE GRAPE—WINE DISTRICT OF EUROPE SITES MOST CONGENIAL TO VINE CULTURE—ANTIQUITY OF CULTURE METHODS OF TRAINING—PROPAGATION—REGENERATION—VARIOUS MODES OP TREATMENT—ANNULAR INCISION—DURATION OF BEARING— FAVOUBITE SPECIES, AND WHENCE DERIVED—TEARS OF THE VINE. The varieties of the vine are very numerous. Those which flourish in the hot-houses of England give no idea of the different species known in the countries most noted for its cultivation. A thousand distinctions have been reckoned in the vines of France, though the traces of difference must be very obscure, eren to the eyes of the experienced cultivator or naturalist. The garden of the Luxembourg in Paris has five hundred and seventy species. In Spain a hundred and twenty kinds have been enumerated in Andalusia alone. M. Dumont, who bas attempted to classify the vines of the Jura, confirms thefact of the obscurity of their differences. He remarks, too, that the task of classifying them generally throughout France yet remains to be executed. The most favoured species of the vine at present, according to French treatises on the subject, obtain their denomination from the varieties in their produce, being the original plant altered in some cases but very slightly, by differences in the soil and mode of cultivation. It would be a waste of time to enumerate the various conjectures which are upon record respecting the original country of the vine. If it came from the East, of which there is little reason to doubt, the name of him who first cultivated it from the wild plant, is lost in oblivion, unless the mention of Noah in Holy Writ may be supposed to fix the name of the discoverer prior to the Dionysus of the Gr...