As they take root, so will we, and after we have
eaten their delicious fruit, the very thought of leaving our acre
will be repugnant. The literature of the vine would fill a
library; the literature of love would crowd many libraries. It is
not essential to read everything before we start a little vineyard
or go a-courting.
It is said that about two thousand known and named varieties of
grapes have been and are being grown in Europe; and all these are
supposed to have been developed from one species (Vitis vinifera),
which originally was the wild product of Nature, like those
growing in our thickets and forests. One can scarcely suppose this
possible when contemplating a cluster of Tokay or some other
highly developed variety of the hot-house. Yet the native vine,
which began to "yield fruit after his kind, the third day"
(whatever may have been the length of that day), may have been,
after all, a good starting-point in the process of development.
One can hardly believe that the "one cluster of grapes" which the
burdened spies, returning from Palestine, bore "between two of
them upon a staff," was the result of high scientific culture. In
that clime, and when the world was young, Nature must have been
more beneficent than now. It is certain that no such cluster ever
hung from the native vines of this land; yet it is from our wild
species, whose fruit the Indians shared with the birds and foxes
(when not hanging so high as to be sour), that we have developed
the delicious varieties of our out-door vineyards.
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