Page:A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and, and the Art of Making Wine.pdf/80

 celebrated for their produce in other countries, it must first be proved, that all the varieties of the vitis vinifera are the progeny of one parent stock—that the modifications which each variety has undergone, and which constitute it, are altogether the effects of circumstances;—and, that each kind, placed under such circumstances, would acquire the same qualities which that parent stock, or any other variety the progeny of it, would in the same circumstances have acquired. But the very use which these writers make of the words essences, races, varieties, &c. point out differences of greater or less importance. Now, though our information is not sufficiently exact, to ascertain what are the most fickle characters of the vine, it is evident, from the efforts which have been made, to reduce the subvarieties under certain heads, that there are certain characters peculiar to some which may be traced, where great changes in other respects have taken place; and in the description given, of the principal varieties of the vines of France, in Chaptal's first work, the words essences primitives, and caracteres constant, intimate in the strongest manner, that all the qualities of a variety are not equally affected by circumstances, if they do not point to a period, when the varieties were few, but the characters distinct. The strongest proof, however, exists, that whatever