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Cardinal Antonelli seized the opportunity to impose a tax of £74,680 upon the vines; and as there were no grapes that year to pay it, the amount was charged upon the different townships. Now which has proved the heaviest scourge the Oidium or the Cardinal Minister? Certainly not the Oidium, for that has disappeared. The Cardinal remains.
Within these hospitable doors Horace might banquet better than he did with Nasidienus, and drink such wine as can only be found among the descendants of the ancestry who, improvident enough in all else, learnt the wisdom of bottling up choice old Bual and Sercial ere the demon of oidium had dried up their generous sources forever.
I was sorry to hear of the devastation committed here by the oidium, or vine blight, and the dreaded phylloxera, which has already ruined thousands, causing a loss of just half the amount of the German war indemnity. This redoubtable foe is not many leagues off!
And now of the wine which once delighted the world, and which has not yet become 'food for the antiquary. To begin with, a few dates and figures are necessary. In 1852, that terrible year for France, the Oidium fungus attacked the vine, and soon reduced to 2,000 the normal yearly production of 20,000 and even 22,000 pipes. In 1813 it was 22,000. In 1816 it was 12,000.
The islanders now mostly drink the harsh, coarse Catalonians; they still, however, make for home consumption a cheap white wine, which improves with age. It is regretable that fears of the oidium and the phylloxera prevent the revival of the industry, for which the Islands are admirably fitted. Potatoes and other produce have also suffered; but that is no obstacle to their being replanted.
Measures are taken against the phylloxera, as against an invading army, but, at present, no remedy has been discovered; and, meantime, many once rich and happy wine-growers are reduced to beggary. It was heart-breaking to gaze on the sickly appearance of the vines already attacked by the oidium, and to hear the harrowing accounts of the misery caused by an enemy more redoubtable still.
Shortly after the flies had some mouldy cream, the Oidium lactis was found in their fæces. Dr. Grassi mentions an innocuous and yet conclusive experiment that every one can try. Sprinkle a little lycopodium on sweetened water, and afterward examine the fæces and intestines of the flies; numerous spores will be found.
First Blanco represented himself as an adoptive American, touring the world and interested in natural resources. When his host had exhausted the subject of the wine-grower's battle against the ravages of "oidium Tuckeri" and "phyloxera," Blanco picked up a stick of sealing-wax from the table and commenced toying with it in a manner of aimlessness.
Such of us as associate their earliest recollections of the name with the annual cask of wine will read with interest that though the wine, thanks to the oidium or some malady of that sort, is a thing of the past, the spot retains many other charms ample to justify a trip to its shores by a more roundabout way than the slow and direct or costly and circuitous routes laid down by Mr. Benjamin.
For years the plant has constantly been treated against oidium with antiseptics, which destroy the spores and germ-growths; and we can hardly expect a first-rate yield from a chronically-diseased stock. Still the drink is rich and highly flavoured; and, under many circumstances, it answers better than any kind of sherry.
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