No. 9 ([page 66, first note]). Although the vine genus is very catholic and cosmopolite in its habits, yet 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 shores of the Morea.
No. 10 ([page 68, first note]). In most of the countries of Southern Europe, sheep and beeves are wintered upon the plains, but driven in the summer to mountain pastures at many days' distance from the homesteads of their owners. They transport seeds in their coats in both directions, and hence Alpine plants often shoot up at the foot of the mountains, the grasses of the plain on the borders of the glaciers; but in both cases, they usually fail to propagate themselves by ripening their seed. This explains the scattered tufts of common clover, with pale and flaccid blossoms, which are sometimes seen at heights exceeding 7,000 feet above the sea.
No. 11 ([page 73, last paragraph]). The poisonous wild parsnip, which is very common in New England, is popularly believed to be identical with the garden parsnip, and differenced only by conditions of growth, a richer soil depriving it, it is said, of its noxious properties. Many wild medicinal plants, such as pennyroyal for example, are so much less aromatic and powerful, when cultivated in gardens, than when self-sown on meagre soils, as to be hardly fit for use.
No. 12 ([page 74, second note]). See in Thoreau's Excursions, an interesting description of the wild apple-trees of Massachusetts.
No. 13 ([page 86, first paragraph]). It is said at Courmayeur that a very few ibexes of a larger variety than those of the Cogne mountains, still linger about the Grande Jorasse.
No. 14 ([page 92, first note]). In Northern and Central Italy, one often sees hillocks crowned with grove-like plantations of small trees, much resembling large arbors. These serve to collect birds, which are entrapped in nets in great numbers. These plantations are called ragnaje, and the reader will find, in Bindi's edition of Davanzati, a very pleasant description of a ragnaja, though its authorship is not now ascribed to that eminent writer.
No. 15 ([page 93, second note]). The appearance of the dove-like grouse, Tetrao paradoxus, or Syrrhaptes Pallasii, in various parts of Europe, in 1859 and the following years, is a noticeable exception to the law of regularity which seems to govern the movements and determine the habitat of birds. The proper home of this bird is the steppes of Tartary, and it is not recorded to have been observed in Europe, or at least west of Russia, until the year abovementioned, when many flocks of twenty or thirty, and even a hundred individuals, were seen in Bohemia, Germany, Holland, Denmark, England, Ireland, and France. A considerable flock frequented the Frisian island of Borkum for more than five months. It was hoped they would breed and remain permanently in the island, but this expectation has been disappointed, and the steppe-grouse seems to have disappeared again altogether.
No. 16 ([page 94, note]). From an article by A. Esquiros, in the Revue des Deux Mondes for Sept. 1, 1864, entitled, La vie Anglaise, p. 119, it appears that such occurrences as that stated in the note are not unfrequent on the British coast.
No. 17 ([page 100, first paragraph]). I cannot learn that caprification is now practised in Italy, but it is still in use in Greece.
No. 18 ([page 112, first note]). The recent great multiplication of vipers in some parts of France, is a singular and startling fact.