Page:The family kitchen gardener - containing plain and accurate descriptions of all the different species and varieties of culinary vegetables (IA familykitchengar56buis).pdf/184



culture of the vine is spoken of in the remotest ages. The antediluvians were no doubt perfectly familiar with its growth and manufacture into an intoxicating drink. Providence, with a bountiful hand, distributes copiously over the earth those fruits which are for the comfort and luxury of man, who frequently converts these blessings into a curse, manufacturing with his own hands an engine for his destruction. The practice of not allowing vines to mature their fruit till the fourth year, was inculcated by Moses, who lectured on the subject to the Israelites. The Egyptians ascribed the manufacture of wine to Osiris, and the Grecians to Bacchus, whom, for the discovery, they elevated to the rank of a deity. Pliny describes many kinds of grapes, one shaped like a finger, which appears to be lost. They had a vine at that period, near Rome,