Page:The family kitchen gardener - containing plain and accurate descriptions of all the different species and varieties of culinary vegetables (IA familykitchengar56buis).pdf/185

 that annually produced about three barrels of pure juice. In those days, young men under thirty, and women, all their lifetime, were forbidden to drink wine. How would these regulations suit the moderns? Plato loved wine: he says, “Nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was ever granted by God to man.” Ignatius Marennius killed his wife with a billet of wood, having caught her drinking wine. He was tried, and was acquitted of murder; but history does not say whether it was by his gold or a justification in the circumstances that he obtained his freedom. Cato records that the custom of kinsfolk kissing women when they met, was to know by their breath if they had been drinking wine! There is no fruit so wholesome—none so generally palatable—none that can be so universally cultivated—and none so remunerating as the Grape. Its rapidity of growth, productiveness, long life and simplicity of culture, may enable every farmer, at least, to live literally under his own vine. There is not a farmer or planter from New York to New Orleans but may cultivate, with a very small outlay, an abundance of this fruit. I never see long, naked post-rail fences, but am reminded of the neglect of this fruit: not that it does not deserve the very best of ground, the most studied culture; but here is a waste of land and the very support that would produce thousands of tons of this inestimable fruit. The extent of its culture in Ohio and other States is rapidly increasing. N. Longworth, Esq., of Cincinnati, a zealous horticulturist, has one hundred acres under culture, which he rents out to Swiss and German vinedressers, who therefrom have an excellent living, and make him a bountiful return. The fruit is manufactured into wine, and sold at from 75 cents to $1.50 per gallon, and the produce of that vicinity is about six hundred barrels. This is merely “a drop in the bucket,” compared with the immense import of the past year. For this purpose their standard Grape is the Catawba,