In a review of Mr. Barron's recent book on the grape, the Gardeners' Chronicle says: "In the first chapter we have an historical sketch, which we should prefer to have dispensed with. It would be rather difficult to establish that 'Juno's crown was made of the vine,' in view of the fact that the existence of Juno herself is open to question! We should deprecate any discussion upon such a point, which is not of a practical character, but if the history had to be gone into at all, it might as well have been stated that by far the earliest records of the vine are the fossil imprints of Montpellier and those of Provence, both of unknown date, but in any case long prior to any human record, Egyptian or otherwise, mentioned by the author. The Swiss and Italian lake-dwellers also knew the vine in the Bronze Age, but no one knows precisely when that age was. Mr. Barron tells us that Syria 'would appear' to be the native country of the vine, and that is possible, but no evidence is given in support of the assumption, while the balance of authority, as summed up by De Candolle in his 'Origine des Plantes Cultivees,' recently noticed in our columns, points rather to the south of the Caucasus and the adjacent region between the Black and the Caspian Seas as the home of the vine.

Before this question can be settled however, we shall have to be sure about a matter on which Mr. Barron is silent. What was the origin of our cultivated vines? Do all our European and Western Asiatic vines (for we may safely exclude the American species and numerous other species from the Eastern tropics) proceed from one species - that which we now call V. vinifera - or have two or more species concurred in developing that now very artificial product, the cultivated vine? In the Caucasus there is one species and two varieties, from which - we are speaking on the strength of information collected by De Candolle - the numerous varieties cultivated in Armenia have evidently sprung. Regel, however, leans to the opinion that our cultivated Vine is a hybrid between V. labrusca and V. vulpina, both natives of North America, the Himalayas, Japan, and China; and if variability in the offspring is any test, the hybrid origin would in so far be strengthened, but in any case, in the case of a plant cultivated for so long a period over so large an area, there has been both time and opportunity for plenty of variation even without cross-breeding. The total number of varieties described from all countries is estimated at about 2,000, but in this country the number grown is relatively very small.

Mr. Barron gives some interesting figures relating to this point - he tells us that in 1768, eighteen sorts were described by Miller, in 1791,Speechly recorded fifty, in 1810, Forsyth mentioned fifty-three. The catalogue of the Horticultural Society in 1831, drawn up by Robert Thompson, contained 182 names (that of 1842, which we have not at hand, is said by Darwin to have comprised ninety-nine varieties ), while Hogg's Fruit Manual of 1875 contains descriptions of 143. Mr. Barron himself enumerated 100, but he purposely omits mention of many inferior varieties."