The Earth As Modified By Human Action Part 4

Besides the vegetables I have mentioned, we know that many plants of smaller economical value have been the subjects of international exchange in very recent times. Busbequius, Austrian amba.s.sador at Constantinople about the middle of the sixteenth century--whose letters contain one of the best accounts of Turkish life which have appeared down to the present day--brought home from the Ottoman capital the lilac and the tulip. The Belgian Clusius about the same time introduced from the East the horse chestnut, which has since wandered to America. The weeping willows of Europe and the United States are said to have sprung from a slip received from Smyrna by the poet Pope; and planted by him in an English garden; Drouyn de l'IIuys, in a discourse delivered before the French Societe d'Acclimatation, in 1860, claims for Rabelais the introduction of the melon, the artichoke and the Alexandria pink into France; and the Portuguese declare that the progenitor of all the European and American oranges was an Oriental tree transplanted to Lisbon, and still living in the last generation. [Footnote: The name portogallo, so generally applied to the orange in Italy, seems to favor this claim. The orange, however, was known in Europe before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, and therefore, before the establishment of direct relations between Portugal and the East.--See Amari, Storia del Musulmani in Sicilia, vol ii., p. 445.

The date-palms of eastern and southern Spain were certainly introduced by the Moors. Leo Von Rozmital, who visited Barcelona in 1476, says that the date-tree grew in great abundance in the environs of that city and ripened its fruit well. It is now scarcely cultivated further north than Valencia. It is singular that Ritter in his very full monograph on the palm does not mention those of Spain.

On the introduction of conifera into England see an interesting article in the Edinburgh Review of October, 1864.

Muller, Das Buch der Pfianzenrodt, p. 86, a.s.serts that in 1802 the ancestor of all the mulberries in France, planted in 1500, was still standing in a garden in the village of Allan-Montelimart.] The present favorite flowers of the parterres of Europe have been imported from America, j.a.pan and other remote Oriental countries, within a century and a half, and, in fine, there are few vegetables of any agricultural importance, few ornamental trees or decorative plants, which are not now common to the three civilized continents.

The statistics of vegetable emigration exhibit numerical results quite surprising to those not familiar with the subject. The lonely island of St. Helena is described as producing, at the time of its discovery in the year 1501, about sixty vegetable species, including some three or four known to grow elsewhere also. [Footnote: It may be considered very highly probable, if not certain, that the undiscriminating herbalists of the sixteenth century must have overlooked many plants native to this island. An English botanist, in an hour's visit to Aden, discovered several species of plants on rocks always reported, even by scientific travellers, as absolutely barren. But after all, it appears to be well established that the original flora of St. Helena was extremely limited, though now counting hundreds of species.] At the present time its flora numbers seven hundred and fifty species--a natural result of the position of the island as the half-way house on the great ocean highway between Europe and the East. Humboldt and Bonpland found, among the unquestionably indigenous plants of tropical America, monocotyledons only, all the dicotyledons of those extensive regions having been probably introduced after the colonization of the New World by Spain.

The seven hundred new species which have found their way to St. Helena within three centuries and a half, were certainly not all, or ever in the largest proportion, designedly planted there by human art, and if we were well acquainted with vegetable emigration, we should probably be able to show that man has intentionally transferred fewer plants than he has accidentally introduced into countries foreign to them. After the wheat, follow the tares that infest it. The woods that grow among the cereal grains, the pests of the kitchen garden, are the same in America as in Europe. [Footnote: Some years ago I made a collection of weeds in the wheatfields of Upper Egypt, and another in the gardens on the Bosphorus. Nearly all the plants were identical with those which grow under the same conditions in New England. I do not remember to have seen in America the scarlet wild poppy so common in European grainfields. I have heard, however, that it has lately crossed the Atlantic, and I am not sorry for it. With our abundant harvests of wheat, we can well afford to pay now and then a loaf of bread for the cheerful radiance of this brilliant flower.] The overturning of a wagon, or any of the thousand accidents which befall the emigrant in his journey across the Western plains, may scatter upon the ground the seeds he designed for his garden, and the herbs which fill so important a place in the rustic materia medica of the Eastern States, spring up along the prairie paths but just opened by the caravan of the settler. [Footnote: Josselyn, who wrote about fifty years after the foundation of the first British colony in New England, says that the settlers at Plymouth had observed more than twenty English plants springing up spontaneously near their improvements.

Every country has many plants not now, if ever, made use of by man, and therefore not designedly propagated by him, but which cl.u.s.ter around his dwelling, and continue to grow luxuriantly on the ruins of his rural habitation after he has abandoned it. The site of a cottage, the very foundation stones of which have been carried off, may often be recognized, years afterwards, by the rank weeds which cover it, though no others of the same species are found for miles.

"Mediaeval Catholicism," says Vaupell, "brought us the red horsehoof--whose reddish-brown flower buds shoot up from the ground when the snow melts, and are followed by the large leaves--comfrey and snake-root, which grow only where there were convents and other dwellings in the Middle Ages."--Bogens Indvandring & de Daneke Skove, pp. 1, 2. ]

Introduction of Foreign Plants.

"A negro slave of the great Cortez," says Humboldt, "was the first who sowed wheat in New Spain. He found three grains of it among the rice which had been brought from Spain as food for the soldiers."

About twenty years ago, a j.a.panese forage plant, the Lesperadeza striata, whose seeds had been brought to the United States by some unknown accident made its appearance in one of the Southern States. It spread spontaneously in various directions, and in a few years was widely diffused. It grows upon poor and exhausted soils, where the formation of a turf or sward by the ordinary gra.s.ses would be impossible, and where consequently no regular pastures or meadows can exist. It makes excellent fodder for stock, and though its value is contested, it is nevertheless generally thought a very important addition to the agricultural resources of the South. [Footnote: Accidents sometimes limit, as well as promote the propagation of foreign vegetables in countries new to them. The Lombardy poplar is a deciduous tree, and is very easily grown from cuttings. In most of the countries into which it has been introduced the cuttings hare been taken from the male, and as, consequently, males only have grown from them, the poplar does not produce seed in those regions. This is a fortunate circ.u.mstance, for otherwise this most worthless and least ornamental of trees would spread with a rapidity that would make it an annoyance to the agriculturist.]

In most of the Southern countries of Europe, the sheep and horned cattle winter on the plains, but in the summer are driven, sometimes many days'

journey, to mountain pastures. Their coats and fleeces transport seeds in both directions. Hence we see Alpine plants in champaign districts, the plants of the plains on the borders of the glaciers, though in neither case do these vegetables ripen their seeds and propagate themselves. This explains the occurrence of tufts of common red clover with pallid and sickly flowers, on the flanks of the Alps at heights exceeding seven thousand feet.

The hortus siccus of a botanist may accidentally sow seeds from the foot of the Himalayas on the plains that skirt the Alps; and it is a fact of very familiar observation, that exotics, transplanted to foreign climates suited to their growth, often escape from the flower garden and naturalize themselves among the spontaneous vegetation of the pastures.

When the cases containing the artistic treasures of Thorvaldsen wore opened in the court of the museum where they are deposited, the straw and gra.s.s employed in packing them were scattered upon the ground, and the next season there sprang up from the seeds no less than twenty-five species of plants belonging to the Roman campagna, some of which were preserved and cultivated as a new tribute to the memory of the great Scandinavian sculptor, and at least four are said to have spontaneously naturalized themselves about Copenhagen. [Footnote: Vaupell, Bogens Indvandring i de Danske Skove, p. 2.]

The Turkish armies, in their incursions into Europe, brought Eastern vegetables in their train, and left the seeds of Oriental wall plants to grow upon the ramparts of Buda and Vienna. [Footnote: I believe it is certain that the Turks introduced tobacco into Hungary, and probable that they in some measure compensated, the injury by introducing maize also, which, as well as tobacco, has been claimed as Hungarian by patriotic Magyars.]

In the campaign of 1814, the Russian troops brought, in the stuffing of their saddles and by other accidental means, seeds from the banks of the Dnieper to the valley of the Rhine, and even introduced the plants of the steppes into the environs of Paris.

The forage imported for the French army in the war of 1870-1871 has introduced numerous plants from Northern Africa and other countries into France, and this vegetable emigration is so extensive and so varied in character, that it will probably have an important botanical, and even economical, effect on the flora of that country. [Footnote: In a communication lately made to the French Academy, M. Vibraye gives numerous interesting details on this subject, and says the appearance of the many new plants observed in France in 1871, "results from forage supplied from abroad, the seeds of which had fallen upon the ground. At the present time, several Mediterranean plants, chiefly Algerian, having braved the cold of an exceptionally severe winter, are being largely propagated, forming extensive meadows, and changing soil that was formerly arid and produced no vegetable of importance into veritable oases." See Nature, Aug. 1, 1872, p. 263. We shall see on a following page that ca.n.a.ls are efficient agencies in the unintentional interchange of organic life, vegetable as well as animal, between regions connected by such channels.]

The Canada thistle, Erigeron Canadense, which is said to have accompanied the early French voyagers to Canada from Normandy, is reported to have been introduced into other parts of Europe two hundred years ago by a seed which dropped out of the stuffed skin of an American bird.

VEGETABLE POWER OF ACCOMMODATION.

The vegetables which, so far as we know their history, seem to have been longest objects of human care, can, by painstaking industry, be made to grow under a great variety of circ.u.mstances, and some of them prosper nearly equally well when planted and tended on soils of almost any geological character; but the seeds of most of them vegetate only in artificially prepared ground, they have little self-sustaining power, and they soon perish when the nursing hand of man is withdrawn from them.

The vine genus is very catholic and cosmopolite in its habits, but particular varieties are extremely fastidious and exclusive in their requirements as to soil and climate. The stocks of many celebrated vineyards lose their peculiar qualities by transplantation, and the most famous wines are capable of production only in certain well-defined and for the most part narrow districts. The Ionian vine which bears the little stoneless grape known in commerce as the Zante currant, has resisted almost all efforts to naturalize it elsewhere, and is scarcely grown except in two or three of the Ionian islands and in a narrow territory on the northern sh.o.r.es of the Morea.

The attempts to introduce European varieties of the vine into the United States have not been successful except in California, [Footnote: In 1869, a vine of a European variety planted in Sta. Barbara county in 1833 measured a foot in diameter four foot above the ground. Its ramifications covered ten thousand square feet of surface and it annually produces twelve thousand pounds of grapes. The bunches are sixteen or eighteen inches long, and weigh six or seven pounds.-Letter from Commissioner of Land-Office, dated May 13, 1860.] and it may be stated as a general rule that European forest and ornamental trees are not suited to the climate of North America, and that, at the same time, American garden vegetables are less luxuriant, productive and tasteful in Europe than in the United States.

The saline atmosphere of the sea is specially injurious both to seeds and to very many young plants, and it is only recently that the transportation of some very important vegetables across the ocean lines been made practicable, through the invention of Ward's air-tight gla.s.s cases. By this means large numbers of the trees which produce the Jesuit's bark were successfully transplanted from America to the British possessions in the East, where this valuable plant may now be said to have become fully naturalized. [Footnote: See Cleghorn, Forests and Gardens of South India, Edinburgh, 1861, and The British Parliamentary return on the Chinchona Plant, 1866. It has been found that the seeds of several species of CINCHONA preserve their vitality long enough to be transported to distant regions. The swiftness of steam navigation render it possible to transport to foreign countries not only seeds but delicate living plants which could not have borne a long voyage by sailing vessels.]

Vegetables, naturalized abroad either by accident or design, sometimes exhibit a greatly increased luxuriance of growth.

The European cardoon, an esculent thistle, has broken out from the gardens of the Spanish colonies on the La Plata, acquired a gigantic stature, and propagated itself, in impenetrable thickets, over hundreds of leagues of the Pampas; and the Anacharis alsinastrum, a water plant not much inclined to spread in its native American habitat, has found its way into English rivers, and extended itself to such a degree as to form a serious obstruction to the flow of the current, and even to navigation.

Not only do many wild plants exhibit a remarkable facility of accommodation, but their seeds usually possess great tenacity of life, and their germinating power resists very severe trials. Hence, while the seeds of many cultivated vegetables lose their vitality in two or three years, and can be transported safely to distant countries only with great precautions, the weeds that infest those vegetables, though not cared for by man, continue to accompany him in his migrations, and find a new home on every soil he colonizes. Nature fights in defence of her free children, but wars upon them when they have deserted her banners and tamely submitted to the domination of man. [Footnote: Tempests, violent enough to destroy all cultivated plants, frequently spare those of spontaneous growth. I have often seen in Northern Italy, vineyards, maize fields, mulberry and fruit trees completely stripped of their foliage by hail, while the forest trees scattered through the meadows, and the shrubs and brambles which sprang up by the wayslde, pa.s.sed through the ordeal with scarcely the loss of a leaflet.]

Indeed, the faculty of spontaneous reproduction and perpetuation necessarily supposes a greater power of accommodation, within a certain range, than we find in most domesticated plants, for it would rarely happen that the seed of a wild plant would fall into ground as nearly similar, in composition and condition, to that where its parent grew, as the soils of different fields artificially prepared for growing a particular vegetable are to each other. Accordingly, though every wild species affects a habitat of a particular character, it is found that, if accidentally or designedly sown elsewhere, it will grow under conditions extremely unlike those of its birthplace. Cooper says: "We cannot say positively that any plant is uncultivable ANYWHERE until it has been tried;" and this seems to be even more true of wild than of domesticated vegetation.

The wild plant is much hardier than the domesticated vegetable, and the same law prevails in animated brute and even human life. The beasts of the chase are more capable of endurance and privation and more tenacious of life, than the domesticated animals which most nearly resemble them.

The savage fights on, after he has received half a dozen mortal wounds, the least of which would have instantly paralyzed the strength of his civilized enemy, and, like the wild boar, he has been known to press forward along the shaft of the spear which was trans-piercing his vitals, and to deal a deathblow on the soldier who wielded it.

True, domesticated plants can be gradually acclimatized to bear a degree of heat or of cold, which, in their wild state, they would not have supported; the trained English racer out-strips the swiftest horse of the pampas or prairies, perhaps even the less systematically educated courser of the Arab; the strength of the European, as tested by the dynamometer, is greater than that of the New Zealander. But all these are instances of excessive development of particular capacities and faculties at the expense of general vital power. Expose untamed and domesticated forms of life, together, to an entire set of physical conditions equally alien to the former habits of both, so that every power of resistance and accommodation shall be called into action, and the wild plant or animal will live, while the domesticated will perish.

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS OF THE UNITED STATES.

According to the census of 1870, the United States had, on the first of June in that year, in round numbers, 189,000,000 acres of improved land, the quant.i.ty having been increased by 16,000,000 acres within the ten years next preceding. [Footnote: Ninth Census of the United States, 1872, p. 841. By "improved" land, in the reports on the census of the United States, is meant "cleared land" used for grazing, gra.s.s, or tillage, or which is now fallow, connected with or belonging to a farm."--Instructions to Marshals and a.s.sistants, Census of 1870.] Not to mention less important crops, this land produced, in the year ending on the day last mentioned, in round numbers, 288,000,000 bushels of wheat, 17,000,000 bushels of rye, 282,000,000 bushels of oats, 6,000,000 bushels of peas and beans, 30,000,000 bushels of barley, orchard fruits to the value of $47,000,000, 640,000 bushels of cloverseed, 580,000 bushels of other gra.s.s seed, 13,000 tons of hemp, 27,000,000 pounds of flax, and 1,730,000 bushels of flaxseed. These vegetable growths were familiar to ancient European agriculture, but they were all introduced into North America after the close of the sixteenth century.

Of the fruits of agricultural industry unknown to the Greeks and Romans, or too little employed by them to be of any commercial importance, the United States produced, in the same year, 74,000,000 pounds of rice, 10,000,000 bushels of buckwheat, 3,000,000 bales of cotton, [Footnote: Cotton, though cultivated in Asia from the remotest antiquity, and known as a rare and costly product to the Latins and the Greeks, was not used by them except as an article of luxury, nor did it enter into their commerce to any considerable extent as a regular object of importation.

The early voyagers found it in common use in the West Indies and in the provinces first colonized by the Spaniards; but it was introduced into the territory of the United States by European settlers, and did not become of any importance until after the Revolution. Cottonseed was sown in Virginia as early as 1621, but was not cultivated with a view to profit for more than a century afterwards. Sea-island cotton was first grown on the coast of Georgia in 1786, the seed having been brought from the Bahamas, when it had been introduced from Anguilla--BIGELOW, Les Etats-Unis en 1868, p. 370]. 87,000 hogsheads of cane sugar, 6,600,000 gallons of cane mola.s.ses, 16,000,000 gallons of sorghum mola.s.ses, all yielded by vegetables introduced into that country within two hundred years, and--with the exception of buckwheat, the origin of which is uncertain, and of cotton--all, directly or indirectly, from the East Indies; besides, from indigenous plants unknown to ancient agriculture, 761,000,000 bushels of Indian corn, 263,000,000 pounds of tobacco, 143,000,000 bushels of potatoes, 22,000,000 bushels of sweet potatoes, 28,000,000 pounds of maple sugar, and 925,000 gallons of maple mola.s.ses.

[Footnote: There is a falling off since 1860 of 11,000,000 pounds in the quant.i.ty of maple sugar and of more than a million gallons of maple mola.s.ses. The high price of cane sugar during and since the late civil war must have increased the product of maple sugar and mola.s.ses beyond what it otherwise would have been, but the domestic warfare on the woods has more than compensated this cause of increase.] To all this we are to add 27,000,000 tons of hay,--produced partly by new, partly by long known, partly by exotic and partly by native herbs and gra.s.ses, the value of $21,000,000 in garden vegetables chiefly of European or Asiatic origin, 3,000,000 gallons of wine, and many minor agricultural products.

[Footnote: Raenie, Bochmeria tenacissima, a species of Chinese nettle producing a fibre which may be spun and woven, and which unites many of the properties of silk and of linen, has been completely naturalized in the United States, and results important to the industry of the country are expected from it.]

The weight of this harvest of a year would be many times the tonnage of all the shipping of the United States at the close of the year 1870--and, with the exception of the maple sugar, the maple mola.s.ses, and the products of the Western prairie lands and of some small Indian clearings, it was all grown upon lands wrested from the forest by the European race within little more than two hundred years. The wants of Europe have introduced into the colonies of tropical America the sugar cane, [Footnote: The sugar cane was introduced by the Arabs into Sicily and Spain as early as the ninth century, and though it is now scarcely grown in those localities, I am not aware of any reason to doubt that its cultivation might be revived with advantage. From Spain it was carried to the West Indies, though different varieties have since been introduced into those Islands from other sources.] the coffee plant, the orange and the lemon, all of Oriental origin, have immensely stimulated the cultivation of the former two in the countries of which they are natives, and, of course, promoted agricultural operations which must have affected the geography of those regions to an extent proportionate to the scale on which they have been pursued.

USEFUL AMERICAN PLANTS GROWN IN EUROPE.

America has partially repaid her debt to the Eastern continent. Maize and the potato are very valuable additions to the field agriculture of Europe and the East, and the tomato is no mean gift to the kitchen gardens of the Old World, though certainly not an adequate return for the mult.i.tude of esculent roots and leguminous plants which the European colonists carried with them. [Footnote: John Smith mentions, In his Historie of Virginia, 1624, pease and beans as having been cultivated by the natives before the arrival of the whites, and there is no doubt, I believe, that several common cucurbitaceous plants are of American origin; but most, if not all the varieties of pease, beans, and other pod fruits now grown in American gardens, are from European and other foreign seed.

Cartier, A.D. 1535-'6, mentions "vines, great melons, cuc.u.mbers, gourds [courges], pease, beans of various colors, but not like ours," as common among the Indians of the banks of the St. Lawrence--Bref Recit, etc., reprint. Paris, 1863, pp. 13, a; 14, b; 20, b; 31, a.] I wish I could believe, with some, that America is not alone responsible for the introduction of the filthy weed, tobacco, the use of which is the most vulgar and pernicious habit engrafted by the semi-barbarism of modern civilization upon the less multifarious sensualism of ancient life; but the alleged occurrence of pipe-like objects in old Sclavonic, and, it has been said, in Hungarian sepulchres, is hardly sufficient evidence to convict those races of complicity in this grave offence against the temperance and the refinement of modern society.

EXTIRPATION OF VEGETABLES.

Lamentable as are the evils produced by the too general felling of the woods in the Old World, I believe it does not appear that any species of native forest tree has yet been extirpated by man on the Eastern continent. The roots, stumps, trunks, and foliage found in bogs are recognized as belonging to still extant species. Except in some few cases where there is historical evidence that foreign material was employed, the timber of the oldest European buildings, and even of the lacustrine habitations of Switzerland, is evidently the product of trees still common in or near the countries where such architectural remains are found; nor have the Egyptian catacombs themselves revealed to us the former existence of any woods not now familiar to us as the growth of still living trees. [Footnote: Some botanists think that a species of water lily represented in many Egyptian tombs has become extinct, and the papyrus, which must have once been abundant in Egypt, is now found only in a very few localities near the mouth of the Nile. It grows very well and ripens its seeds in the waters of the Anapus near Syracuse, and I have seen it in garden ponds at Messina and in Malta. There is no apparent reason for believing that it could not be easily cultivated in Egypt, to any extent, if there were any special motive for encouraging its growth.

Silphium, a famous medicinal plant of Lybia and of Persia, seems to have disappeared entirely. At any rate there is no proof that it now exists in either of those regions. The Silphium of Greek and Roman commerce appears to have come wholly from Cyrene, that from the Asiatic deserts being generally of less value, or, as Strabo says, perhaps of an inferior variety. The province near Cyrene which produced it was very limited, and according to Strabo (ed. Casaubon, p. 837), it was at one time almost entirely extirpated by the nomade Africans who invaded the province and rooted out the plant.

The vegetable which produced the Balm of Gilead has not been found in modern times, although the localities in which it anciently grew have been carefully explored.] It is, however, said that the yew tree, Taxus baccata, formerly very common in England, Germany, and--as we are authorized to infer from Theophrastus--in Greece, has almost wholly disappeared from the latter country, and seems to be dying out in Germany. The wood of the yew surpa.s.ses that of almost any other European tree in closeness and fineness of grain, and it is well known for the elasticity which of old made it so great a favorite with the English archer. It is much in request among wood carvers and turners, and the demand for it explains, in part, its increasing scarcity.

It is also a.s.serted that no insect depends upon it for food or shelter, or aids in its fructification, and birds very rarely feed upon its berries: these are circ.u.mstances of no small importance, because the tree hence wants means of propagation or diffusion common to so many other plants. But it is alleged that the reproductive power of the yew is exhausted, and that it can no longer be readily propagated by the natural sowing of its seeds, or by artificial methods. If further investigation and careful experiment should establish this fact, it will go far to show that a climatic change, of a character unfavorable to the growth of the yew, has really taken place in Germany, though not yet proved by instrumental observation, and the most probable cause of such change would be found in the diminution of the area covered by the forests. The industry of man is said to have been so successful in the local extirpation of noxious or useless vegetables in China, that, with the exception of a few water plants in the rice grounds, it is sometimes impossible to find a single weed in an extensive district; and the late eminent agriculturist, Mr. c.o.ke, is reported to have offered in vain a considerable reward for the detection of a weed in a large wheatfield on his estate in England. In these cases, however, there is no reason to suppose that diligent husbandry has done more than to eradicate the pests of agriculture within a comparatively limited area, and the c.o.c.kle and the darnel will probably remain to plague the slovenly cultivator as long as the cereal grains continue to bless him. [Footnote: Although it is not known that man has absolutely extirpated any vegetable, the mysterious diseases which have, for the last twenty years, so injuriously affected the potato, the vine, the orange, the olive, and silk husbandry, are ascribed by some to a climatic deterioration produced by excessive destruction of the woods. As will be seen in the next chapter, a r.e.t.a.r.dation in the period of spring has been observed in numerous localities in Southern Europe, as well as in the United States, and this change has been thought to favor the multiplication of the obscure parasites which causee the injury to the vegetables mentioned.

Babinet supposes the parasites which attack the grape and the potato to be animal, not vegetable, and he ascribes their multiplication to excessive manuring and stimulation of the growth of the plants on which they live. They are now generally, it not universally, regarded as vegetable, and if they are so, Babinet's theory would be even more plausible than on his own supposition.--Etudes et lectures, ii, p. 269.

It is a fact of some interest in agricultural economy, that the oidium, which is so destructive to the grape, has produced no pecuniary loss to the proprietors of the vineyards in France. "The price of wine," says Lavergne, "has quintupled, and as the product of the vintage has not diminished in the same proportion, the crisis has been, on the whole, rather advantageous than detrimental to the country."--Economie rurale de la France, pp. 263, 264.

France produces a large surplus of wines for exportation, and the sales to foreign consumers are the princ.i.p.al source of profit to French vinegrowers. In Northern Italy, on the contrary, which exports little wine, there has been no such increase in the price of wine as to compensate the great diminution in the yield of the vines, and the loss of this harvest is severely felt. In Sicily, however, which exports much wine, prices have risen as rapidly as in France. Waltershausen informs us that in the years 1838-'42, the red wine of Mount Etna sold at the rate of one kreuzer and a half, or one cent the bottle, and sometimes even at but two thirds that price, but that at present it commands five or six times as much.

The grape disease has operated severely on small cultivators whose vineyards only furnished a supply for domestic use, but Sicily has received a compensation in the immense increase which it has occasioned in both the product and the profits of the sulphur mines. Flour of sulphur is applied to the vine as a remedy against the disease, and the operation is repeated from two to three or four--and sometimes even eight or ten--times in a season. Hence there is a great demand for sulphur in all the vine-growing countries of Europe, and

Waltershausen estimates the annual consumption of that mineral for this single purpose at 850,000 centner, or more than forty thousand tons. The price of sulphur has risen in about the same proportion as that of the wine.--Waltershausen, Ueber den Sicilianischen Ackerbau, pp. 19, 20.]