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 between the two families of plants; or, as if the best soil for wine had not been in those days as well as now, (at least in France), improper for corn.

After being for two centuries deprived of the blessing, it was to the emperor Probus that the Gauls were indebted for liberty to replant the vine; and this era is important, because to it the French writers refer the orgin of the most marked distinctions, which, form what they call the families, races or species of their vine.–"The plants brought anew through the channels of commerce, from Sicily and Greece, from the Archipelago, and the coasts of Africa, became the types of those innumerable varieties, which, even to this day, people the vineyards of France."

Towards the close of the last century, when the light of science, which in France had so long beamed on objects less important to mankind, began to shed a few scattered rays upon that art, which is, in some degree, the basis of ail others: ant men of genius began to think, that philosophy, without compromising her dignity might cooperate with practical experience, in illustrating the business of the husbandmen, it is not