sustain them, it is well worth while to examine somewhat closely into the foundation of these predictions. For should they be well grounded, it will be ill for the many who are now investing their savings in this alluring industry, with the hope of literally being enabled, hereafter, to sit under their own vine and fig tree.

It behooves, first of all, to consider the causes of the previous great depression, and to draw lessons therefrom. Why was it that the wines of California were a drug in the market, and barely passed muster under foreign labels? It was, unquestionably, because in their hurry to realize the golden harvest, the great majority of the vintners of that time aimed altogether at quantity to the neglect of quality, and threw upon the market chiefly wines badly made from such indifferent material as the Mission grape, and which had barely had time to get fairly through their after-fermentation; consequently lacked character, and frequently spoiled on the purchasers' hands. When the standard varieties of foreign grapes, prudently introduced by far-seeing men, came into bearing, bad was made worse by giving to wines made of Mission must, with a slight admixture of the nobler juice, the name of the latter: thus conveying to the consumer in the East and to a few daring investigators of the new article in Europe, the idea that the noble Riesling, the Chaselas, and the best varieties of Burgundy and the Bordelais, were so deteriorated in the California climate as to yield an irredeemably faulty product, which could at most be used for dilution, to some extent, of the wines of France or Germany, but whose earthy, harsh taste would ever render them unacceptable to the knower of good wine.

It were bootless to discuss at this time whether the growers or the wine merchants were most to blame for these costly mistakes; or whether, perhaps, they were only an almost inevitable phase of an incipient industry under new conditions. It suffices for our present purpose to know that such a state of things existed at the time of neap tide; and that knowledge should forever pre

vent a repetition of the faults that led to such a low ebb. It is difficult to conjecture how long the depression would have continued. but for the intervention of that arch-enemy, the phylloxera, which spread terror and devastation among the vineyards of France, and sent her wine merchants and their foreign correspondents on a painful search for new sources of supply to all possibly available countries. They began to recollect that among her many sins in the way of bad wines, California had furnished some really good samples. Could it be possible that these might be duplicated, and the French wines thus saved from the "foxy" contamination of the native American wines which the Eastern States were willing and able to furnish in unlimited quantities?

It was the turning-point of the tide in Californian viticulture. The attention not only of France but of the Eastern States was again directed to the product of Californian vineyards, which in the meantime had brought a respectable area of good European varieties into bearing, and could make a vastly better showing for quality. And, although some mistakes have been made even since then, on the whole the golden opportunity has been well utilized by our wine makers. From the lowly function of producing something that France would tolerate as an admixture to her wines, they have rapidly risen to that of establishing standard qualities that find favor under their own names and labels. They have become convinced, and are rapidly converting the rest of the world to the belief, that the faults heretofore observed in California wines were not of Nature's making; and that between the limits of Oregon and Mexico most, if not all the most desirable qualities of European wines may be reproduced under an intelli gent selection and mutual adaptation o grape-varieties, climates and soils, and b the manufacture of wines under the manage ment of experts, instead of the hap-hazar system before pursued. And not bein trammeled by time-honored habits in th premises, they are rapidly and conscious] applying American ingenuity and energy