Spec. Plant. Willd. i. 1180.

Cl. 5. Ord. 1. Pentandria Monogynia. Nat. ord. Vitaceae.

G. 453. Petals cohering at the apex, shrivelling. Berry five-seeded; superior.

Species 1. V. vinifera.1 Common Vine. Med. Pot. 3d edit. 144. t. 57. Duhamel, Arb. ii. t. 1-6.

Officinal. Uva, Lond. Vitis vinifera fructus, Edin. Vitis viniferae fructus siccatus, Dub. Raisins, Sun Raisins.

Syn. Raisins sees (F.), Rosinen (G.), Groote raaynen (Dutch), Russin (Swe.), Uva passa (I.), Passas (S), Uvas Passadas (Port.), Zabib (Arab.), Kishmish (H.), Dividatsipalavuttil (Tarn.), Velit chamoodika gheddie (Cyng.), Mewuz ( Pers.), Zebub ( Malay).

The vine is a native of Armenia, Georgia, and the Levant; but is now found in most of the temperate regions of the earth, and is cultivated with care wherever its fruit can be brought to perfection. In France, the northern limit of the vine is stated to be 50° 20'2; in Thuringia, Saxony, and Siberia, it is 51°; but towards the east it is lower, for although Hungary has much wine, yet Gallicia has none; and in the southern parts of the Russian empire it ascends no higher than 48o In America, the vine is cultivated in the southern States only, extending no farther north than 38°. The limits southward in the northern hemisphere is properly 15°; but in the high mountainous island of St. Thomas on the coast of Guinea, in Abyssinia, and in the Deccan, it is found almost under the equator. In the southern hemisphere, its southern limits are 37°. The greatest altitude, in 45° latitude, is 2460 feet; in the north of Switzerland, 1700 feet; on the Alpine range, 2000 feet; in Madeira, 2030 feet; in Teneriffe, 2500 feet; and on the Apennines and in Sicily, 3000 feet.1 Its culture is supposed to have been introduced from the East, where it was cultivated, and wine made from the fruit, in the earliest ages2; and afterwards to have extended to Italy, about 600 years after the foundation of Rome, and thence to Burgundy in the time of the Antonines. It was introduced into Madeira, from the island of Cyprus, in the fifteenth century.

In Great Britain, the vine was cultivated before the year 731, when Bede finished his history; but although it was at one period brought to considerable perfection3, yet, from the greater value of the ground for the cultivation of corn, and the wines produced in this country having never equalled those of the Continent, vineyards are now scarcely known in Britain. The vine, therefore, is cultivated for the dessert only, no raisins are made, and scarcely any wine.

Graecorum.

2 " In 1827, the quantity of vineyard land in France was 4,265,000 acres, or one thirtieth part of the surface of that kingdom; the annual production of wine is 812,808,040 gallons; the vine-growers are about 1,800,000 in number; and the tax on the wine amounts to 2,900,000l. per annum. The wine is thus disposed of:- 198,000,000 of gallons are consumed by the proprietors; 141,680,000 are made into brandy; 91,344,000 lost and wasted among the growers, and 44,000,000 in the hands of the dealers; 24,530,000 exported; and 11,000,000 made into vinegar. The loss by evaporation is 12 per cent. on the small, and 5 per cent. on the large, casks." - Bowring's Report on the Commercial Intercourse between France and Great Britain.

The vine has a blender, twisted, climbing stem, covered with a rough, peeling, fibrous bark. The leaves are lobed, and sinuated, serrated, and placed alternately on long footstalks. The flowers, which appear in June and July, are small, and produced in clusters attended by tendrils: the calyx is very minute: the petals are of a greenish white colour, adherent at their apices, and soon fall off, like a little cap, from the anthers, when they spread and shed their pollen. The fruit is a succulent, globular berry, one-celled when ripe; naturally containing five seeds; but in general only two, which are hard and of an irregular form. There are many varieties of the vine; that which is called the Alexandrian Frontignac yields the most delicious grapes for eating, and the Syrian the largest bunches.4

1 See extract from Prof. Schowe's work on the Geography of Plants. Edin. Phil. Journ.

2 We are told, that Noah, after coming out of the ark, planted a vineyard, and "drank of the wine, and was drunken." - Genesis, chap. ix. ver. 20, 21.

3 There were many vineyards in different parts of this country from which wine was made; and we are informed, that in the cellar at Arundel castle, in 1763, there were sixty pipes of excellent Burgundy, the produce of a vineyard attached to the castle. -Museum Rusticum, i. 85.

4 This is supposed to be the sort of grape which the spies, sent by Moses to examine Canaan, cut down at the book Eshcol; " a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff."- Numbers, chap. xiii. 23. Strabo relates, that in Margiana bunches of grapes were produced two cubits, or a yard long; and in some of the Archipelago islands, they weigh from thirty to forty pounds. The Syrian grape, in this country, has produced bunches weighing nineteen pounds and a half. - Martyns edition of Miller's Dictionary. There is a grape, cultivated in Madeira as a dessert fruit, the clusters of which sometimes weigh twenty pounds.

Raisins are made from the varieties named the black-raisin grape, and the white-raisin grape. They are cured in two methods; either by cutting the stalk of the bunches half through, when the grapes are nearly ripe, and leaving them suspended on the vine till their watery part be evaporated, and the sun dries and candies them; or by gathering the grapes when they are fully ripe, and dipping them in a ley made of the ashes of the burnt tendrils; after which they are exposed to the sun to dry. Those cured in the first method are most esteemed. They are brought to this country packed in boxes with sand.

Qualities. - Grapes, when recent and fully ripe, have an agreeable, cooling, sweet, subacid taste. They contain, besides water, sugar, mucilage, and jelly, albumen, gluten1, tannin, bitartrate of potassa, tartrate of lime, phosphate of magnesia, chloride of sodium, sulphate of potassa, and tartaric, citric, and malic acids: and a mucoso-saccharine principle, which Chaptal and Proust regard as the constituent on which the fermentative process in bruised grapes depends. Raisins differ from grapes chiefly in the quantity of saccharine matter being more abundant; but the sugar of grapes differs from common sugar in containing less carbon.

Medical properties and uses. - The ripe fruit of the vine is cooling and antiseptic; and when eaten in large quantities, diuretic and laxative. Grapes are very useful in febrile diseases, particularly in bilious and putrid fevers, dysentery, and all inflammatory affections. In Syria, the juice of ripe grapes, inspissated, is used in great quantity in these diseases.2 Grapes have been strongly recommended as an article of common diet in phthisis3; and they certainly contain much bland nutritious matter, well fitted for phthisical habits. Raisins are more laxative than the fresh fruit, and are apt to prove flatulent when eaten in any considerable quantity. They are used as an adjunct to some officinal preparations; but add nothing to their efficacy.