Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/47

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vine grows every where, and were we to judge of the quality of its produce, by the vigour of its vegetation, we should prefer for its culture the most fertile and best manured soils; but experience proves, that the quality of the wine bears little relation to the luxuriance of the plant: perhaps it is not going too far to say, that the excellence of the wine is inversely, as the strength of vegetation shewn by the vine. Nature has reserved for the vine, dry, light, and free soils, and confided to those which are strong the production of corn—

Rich argillaceous soils are, in all points of view, improper for the vine; their firmness prevents the dissemination of the minute fibres of the roots, and their coldness is prejudicial to the plant. If a light shower falls, it is evaporated before it sinks beneath the surface, and the same coherence, which prevented the entrance of a less degree of moisture, opposes itself to the evaporation of those heavy rains which penetrate deeper. Thus, the root seldom receives moisture but in excess, and the air and heat, finding the same obstacles to their