Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/49

Rh Accordingly, we find the soils of many celebrated vineyards to be calcareous. Some of the best soils of Champagne, rest upon a substratum of chalk, in which the vine is long of coming to maturity; but in which, when once rooted and established, it maintains itself with vigour. Chalk also enters largely into the composition of the soil, which produces the celebrated white wines of Sauterne.

A mixture of stones is always an important addition even to a soil possessing all the requisites of dryness, lightness, and porosity. The root spreads itself easily in a soil rendered penetrable by a mixture of rounded stones, and while the bed of pebbles on the surface oppose themselves to the evaporation of the necessary moisture, they facilitate the filtration of what may be in excess, and reflect back on the grape, the benign influence of the sun's rays.

Volcanic soils have been always observed to produce delicious wines. These virgin soils having been long elaborated in the interior of the earth by subterranean fires, present an intimate mixture of all the earthy principles. When this semi-vitrified substance is decomposed by the combined action of air and water, it furnishes all the elements of a good vegetation, and the fire with which it is