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166 FRUITS IN THEIR SEASON.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Transcript
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Ii.-^-Geape Gatherings. Whether Our Firs...
The size of the berries is more an object with English fruit-growers than the size of the bunches , but these sometimes attain enormous
magnitude , one having" been exhibited some years ago which present weighed to 19 a jib friend ., and at a when distanc transmitted ewas carried by its suspended noble owner to a pole as a ,
on the shoulders of two men , in , the style of , the spy-borne cluster of Eshcol . The latter are supposed to have been of * the kind now
grown on Mount Libanus , where the vines creep along the surface of the groundand bear grapes as large as plums . In Madeira
too there is a , dessert grape the clusters of which often weigh twenty ounds . .
For the p purpose of wine-making , however , the small berries are the bestsince the strength and flavor of the liquor de |) endsas in
and cider the , more , austere upon kinds the too skin are and preferred seeds than to those on the which pulp are of more the , fruit plea- ,
sant to eat . Plucked from the parent plant and beaten , pressed _,, or troddenthe vintage grapes submit to a process which seems like
destruction , , in order that they may rise again like martyrs , in a more lorious form . One kind alonethe muscatel of the warm south ,
isg exempted from the violence to which , all its congeners are exposed _, and suffered gently to weep itself to wine , the bunches , bursting with
ripeness , being merely laid down till the pressure of their own weight produces the _droppings of which the wine is made , which thence , in
Spain , 'bears the name of lagrima . Many as are the varieties of the grape cultivated in different parts *
of Europe , they may all be considered as of one species , the vinifera ; but , once across the Atlantic , we are beyond the dominion of Bacchus ,
and though certainly a vine abounds in America , it is no longer the vine , the sacred plant of the son of Sernele . This wild climber ,
peculiar to America , has , as Humboldt says , given rise to the general error that the " vinifera" is common to the two continentswhereas
, in truth the Vitis vulpina of America is of another and far lower caste , a _j > ariah of vinesindelibly tainted with a flavor which can only
be very described as " foxy , . " But though the foxes have thus " spoiled the _vineyards" in a manner unthought of by Theocritusthe plants
, if not sweet are at least strong , and are often found on the banks of the Ohio with a stem three feet in circumference and branches 200
feet long ; but the best varieties of its fruit are anything but agreeable to a British palate , a _, nd though both a red and a white wine
have been made from it , said rather to resemble Moselle , even in this stateunfortunatelit still retains the brand of the " brush . " Both
, y , the fruit and the leaves , which are but very slightly lobed , are much larger than those of the European vineand it is therefore .
sometimes grown in England for ornamental purposes , , though little esteemed otherwise . One of the best writers on such subjects in
Americahoweverremarks that the vines there <( are generally but one remove , from , a wild state , accidentally improved varieties that
have sprung up in woods and fields from wild vines ; " therefore , as-
166 Fruits In Their Season.
166 FRUITS IN THEIR SEASON .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Nov. 1, 1860, page 166, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01111860/page/22/
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