Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/66

26, and other places, and thus deprive them of a trade, from which they drew the most considerable part of their revenues."

As, however, circumstances which can only be estimated by each proprietor, sometimes makes it advantageous to plant vines on good soils, with a view to obtain a larger quantity of wine, though of an inferior quality, so with the same views it is by no means uncommon to assist poor soils by the addition of manure.

Indeed, in some countries the pruning knife is so sparingly applied, and the soil where it grows so rich, that the vine seems to change the character of a shrub for that of a tree. Travellers speak with rapture, of bowers formed by the vine, intertwining itself with, and overtopping the highest branches of, the olive and the mulberry;—of the delightful shade of their contrasted foliage, and the refreshing coolness of their delicious fruit;—of the richness of that soil, which, in addition to these, can bear heavy crops of wheat in the intervals of their festooned rows;—and of the benignity of that clime, where the husbandman sees the same field "run o'er" with the gifts of Ceres and Bacchus, and with the "amber store" of the olive, or the mulberry, from whose leaves the silk worm draws its delicate thread, to administer to his luxury and pride.