[50] Vaupell, Bögens Indvandring i de Danske Skove, p. 2.
[51] It is, I believe, nearly certain that the Turks inflicted tobacco upon 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.
[52] Accidents sometimes limit, as well as promote, the propagation of foreign vegetables in countries new to them. The Lombardy poplar is a diœcious tree, and is very easily grown from cuttings. In most of the countries into which it has been introduced the cuttings have 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 circumstance, for otherwise this most worthless and least ornamental of trees would spread with a rapidity that would make it an annoyance to the agriculturist. See Appendix, [No. 10].
[53] Tempests, violent enough to destroy all cultivated plants, often spare those of spontaneous growth. During the present summer, I have 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 wayside, passed through the ordeal with scarcely the loss of a leaflet.
[54] The boar spear is provided with a short crossbar, to enable the hunter to keep the infuriated animal at bay after he has transfixed him.
[55] 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.
[56] Although it is not known that man has 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—whether in this case the malady resides in the mulberry or in the insect—are ascribed by some to a climatic deterioration produced by excessive destruction of the woods. As will be seen in the next chapter, a retardation in the period of spring has been observed in numerous localities in Southern Europe, as well as in the United States. This change has been thought to favor the multiplication of the obscure parasites which cause the injury to the vegetables just 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, if not universally, regarded as vegetable, and if they are so, Babinet's theory would be even more plausible than on his own supposition.—Études 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."—Économie Rurale de la France, pp. 263, 264.
France produces a considerable surplus of wines for exportation, and the sales to foreign consumers are the principal 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.