after dark. At my hotel I bade good-by to the gentleman from whom I had learned so much, and the next day was on my way to Avignon. A traveling companion who lived near Avignon informed me it was the custom in his neighborhood. to heap up about the feet of the olive-trees, every autumn, little mounds of earth fifteen inches high, to protect against frost. He also said they did the same with their vines, which otherwise could not support even the mild winters of the south. Avignon, it will be noted, is in the great South of France vine-country, and the vines alluded to were grown in souche. This was what I had not learned before, and came from a stranger, yet I am inclined to believe it, though I don't think it is true of the vines about Montpellier, or those immediately on the coast. At Avignon the rail route toward Lyons enters the Valley of the Rhone, and, for a long way up that valley, the same method of training and the same vines are found as those I have been writing of, and as this continues all the way to Valence, which is in the latitude of Bordeaux, I can readily believe in the necessity of covering up in winter. CHAPTER XVIII. WOULD LOW SOUCHE VINES DO WELL IN AMERICA? S As regards California, this is no longer an open question. In certain parts of Texas, too, they have a wild vine which takes the low souche form of itself, by help of winter killing, which regularly cuts it down to a few eyes close to the old stalk. Those of us who would try the experiment should begin with varieties whose joints are short, whose canes are stiff, or, what is better, erect in their growth, and whose fruit-buds are found close to the old stock, or souche. If we have none which combine these qual ifications with the other essentials of a good plant, means can probably be found for educating such as we have into the requisite habit of growth. In view of the possibility that we may not be able at once to lay our hand on precisely the right kind to begin with, I have imported the French varieties already mentioned. Of course they must be covered in winter, except the Folle-blanche, which may be hardy enough to do without it in some of our Southern States; but cov ering little ten-inch stumps would be a very trifling matter in comparison with the laying down and burying of high souches, which is even now the practice in our colder grape regions, and has always been done in some parts of Hungary. For ripening grapes on vines trained in souche, the requisite amount of heat during the growing season may be estimated from the following data, obtained after much search in a corner of the Imperial Library at Paris, where were deposited a few volumes of reports on the statistics of some of the departments. Perhaps in a future edition I shall be able to furnish something more satisfactory than the range of the thermometer in but two of the departments of the great vine-region of South France, one of them covering only two years, and the other only one. The mean temperature of the Department of the Gard during each month of the growing and ripening season, for the years 1838 and 1839 respectively, and that of the Department of the Bouches-du-Rhone, where Marseilles is situated, during the corresponding months of the year 1821, were as follows: April. May. June. July. Aug. Sept. Oct. Gard, 1838...... 53.24 63.86 72.05 70.70 74.48 67.73 | 61.70 | | | | 55.58 64.86 | 76.17 | 78,26|76.04 | 68.38 | 60.20 1839. With the indication thus given of the temperature of the warmest portion of the South of France, every one can compare that of his own particular section, and judge if its climate is warm enough to ripen grapes on vines trained in low souche. I will, however, give the mean temperature of one point in the Ohio Valley and one in the Lake Erie region : Cincinnati April. May. June. July. Aug. Sept. Oct. 54.10 63.60|71.40 76.50|74.20|66. 53.20 57.53 68.65 74.01 72.41 64.94 53.16 The degree of heat needed to ripen the Folleblanche in souche is less than what the other varieties seem to require. It alone, so far as I could learn, flourishes in that form as far north as Bordeaux, and even farther north in the Department of the Charente, where, as we have seen, it yields the wine of which Cognac brandy is made. The mean temperature of the Charente, derived from observations made during a series of four years, at the hours of seven A.M. and two and eleven P.M. each day, is as follows: June. April. May. July. August. September. October. 47.90 53.81 58.19 60.87 59.28 57.68 47.98 Whether we compare with the South of France, then, or the far more temperate region of the Bordelais and the Charente, it will appear that throughout the greater part of the United States we shall have a sufficiency of solar heat for ripening grapes on vines in souche. It has been objected to this kind of training that it can not succeed except in an extremely dry climate. But vines in souche seem to do as well in the Valley of the Rhone, where the mean rain-fall for the year is 36 inches (the same as in L'Herault), and for the summer months 9 inches, as in Gironde and Charente, where the yearly quantity is but 24 inches, or in parts of California, where the summer mean is less than 2 inches. Or, if we regard the dryness or dampness of the air merely, and not the rain-fall, we find such vines supporting as well the aridity of the South of France, where there are but 77 rainy days. in the year, as the moisture of the Valley of the Gironde, where there are 141, or of the Valley of the Charente, where there are 150 of them in a year. A good deal has been published in America on the climatology of the grape, in which the quantity of the annual as well as of the summer rain-fall is treated as being very important. It seems to me that the true inquiry should be how dry, or how moist, are the soil and the air during the growing and ripening process? Languedoc, with 36 inches of rain-fall, is a dry region, chiefly because those 36 |