XXXI.
WHY DOES THE VINE IRRIGATED WITH WINE DIE, ESPECIALLY THE VERY WINE MADE FROM ITS OWN GRAPES?
Is it as baldness happens to great wine-bibbers, the heat of the wine evaporating the moisture? Or, as Empedocles saith,
the putrefied water in the wood becomes wine beneath the bark,... thus, when the vine is outwardly irrigated with wine, it is as fire to the vine, and destroys the nutritive faculty. Or, because wine is obstructive, it gets into the roots, stops the passages, and so hinders any moisture from coming to the plant to make it grow and thrive. Or, it may seem contrary to Nature that that should return into the vine which came out of it; for whatsover moisture comes from plants can neither nourish nor be again a part of the plant.
Quaestiones Naturales. Plutarch. ed. William W. Goodwin. Boston. 1874.
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