The Gardener’s Magazine. June 1912

XIV.) The culture of the grape as an article of husbandry etends over a zone about two thousand miles in breadth that is from about the twenty-first to the fiftieth degree of north latitude ; and reaching in length from the western shores of Portugal at least to the centre of Persia and probably to near the sources of the Oxus and_the Indus. [...] The best wines are made about the centre of the zone ; the wines towards the north being harsh and austere end the grapes towards the south being better adopted fodrying and preserving as raisins. [...] Thus in Spain while the wine of Xeres in the Sierra Morena (the real Sherry) is art excellent wine and while that of the ridge of Apulxarras Granada is very tolerable the grapes of the warm shores about Malaga and in Valentia are chiefly fit only for raisins. [...] But in Italy is found the true vine of poetry surrounding the stone cottage with its girdle flinging its liant and luxuriant branches over the rustic viranda or twining its long garland from tree to tree.*" It was the Luxuriance and the beauty of her vines and her olives that tempted the rudpeople of the North to pour down upon her ttrtile fields"June) THE (7.4.1. [...] 71 The prostrate South to the destroyer yields Her boasted titles and her golden fields With grim delight the brood of winter view A brighter day and heavens of azure hue Scent the new fragrance of the breathing rose And quaff the pendant vintage as it grows." In Greece too as well as Italy the shoots of the vines are either trained upon trees or supported so as to display all their luxuri