The increase in the price of wines, in consequence of the diminution of the product from the grape disease, however, has brought even these ashes under cultivation. "I found," says Waltershausen, referring to the years 1861-62, "plains of volcanic sand and half-subdued lava streams, which twenty years ago lay utterly waste, now covered with fine vineyards. The ashfield of ten square miles above Nicolosi, created by the eruption of 1669, which was entirely barren in 1835, is now planted with vines almost to the summits of Monte Rosso, at a height of three thousand feet" Ueber den Sicilianischen Ackerbau, p. 19.] But the cactus is making inroads even here, while the volcanic sand and molten rock thrown out by Vesuvius soon become productive. Before the great eruption of 1631 even the interior of the crater was covered with vegetation. George Sandys, who visited Vesuvius in 1611, after it had reposed for several centuries, found the throat of the volcano at the bottom of the crater "almost choked with broken rocks and trees that are falne therein." "Next to this," he continues, "the matter thrown up is ruddy, light, and soft: more removed, blacke and ponderous: the uttermost brow, that declineth like the seates in a theater, flourishing with trees and excellent pasturage. The midst of the hill is shaded with chestnut trees, and others bearing sundry fruits." [Footnote: A Relation of a Journey Begun An. Dom. 1610, lib. 4, p. 260, edition of 1615. The testimony of Sandys on this point is confirmed by that of Pighio, Braccini, Magliocco, Salimbeni, and Nicola di Rubco, all cited by Roth, Der Vesuv., p. 9. There is some uncertainty about the date of the last eruption previous to the great one of 163l. Ashes, though not lava, appear to have been thrown out about the year 1500, and some chroniclers have recorded an eruption in the year 1306; but this seems to be an error for 1036, when a great quantity of lava was ejected. In 1130, ashes were thrown out for many days. I take these dates from the work of Roth just cited.] I am convinced that forests would soon cover many parts of the Arabian and African deserts, if man and domestic animals, especially the goat and the camel, were banished from them. The hard palate and tongue and strong teeth and jaws of this latter quadruped enable him to break off and masticate tough and thorny branches as large as the finger. He is particularly fond of the smaller twigs, leaves, and seed-pods of the sont and other acacias, which, like the American Robinia, thrive well on dry and sandy soils, and he spares no tree the branches of which are within his reach, except, if I remember right, the tamarisk that produces manna. Young trees sprout plentifully around the springs and along the winter water-courses of the desert, and these are just the halting stations of the caravans and their routes of travel. In the shade of these trees, annual grasses and perennial shrubs shoot up,