impregnated, seems to pass successively into all the plants confided to it.
Some of the best vineyards of the south of France, are situated on the debris, or waste of volcanoes. The decomposed lava at the foot of Vesuvius, produces the famous Italian wine, called Lachryma Christi; Tokay wine is produced on a volcanic soil; and the soil of the hills of Campania, famous for the Falernum of the ancients, is said to be coloured yellow, by the sulphur it contains.
There are many places on the varied surface of the globe, where granite has ceased to retain that character of hardness, and indestructibility, which generally distinguishes that primitive rock; and where, pulverized by the action of the elements during many ages, it is reduced to a sand of a finer or coarser description. The soil of the vine yards of Hermitage, and of many others of great celebrity, consists of this decomposed gravel, which seems to possess all the requisites for a superior produce of wine, uniting that lightness and porosity which permits the roots to spread, the water to filtrate, and the air to penetrate, while the stony surface arrests the rays of the sun before they penetrate to the roots.
It may be concluded, from what has been said,
