the wine-holders were usually made of the skins of animals. The culture of the vine was a most important industry in Greece and Italy, and the plant itself is said to have attained proportions which are rarely if at all equalled in our day. We are told, for example, that in the city of Populonium there was a statue formed of the trunk of a single vine, which for ages remained proof against all decay;[161] and again that at Metapontum the temple of Juno stood supported by pillars formed of the same material. Pliny says that there were in his day ninety-one varieties of vine, of which he describes several, giving many details concerning their cultivation.[162] He mentions one hundred and sixteen different sorts of wine, whereof fifty are called “generous;” and he (as well as other writers of his day) speaks of the wines of Latium in Italy, chiefly those growing near the sea, and of certain islands in the Grecian Archipelago (Chios, Lesbos, &c.), as the most highly prized and commended. Various substances were used to improve and give flavour to the wines of those days, and amongst them we find named sea-water, turpentine, resin, gypsum, almonds, parched salt, goats’ milk, cedar cones, salts of lead, and a variety of others which would seem hardly suited to the purpose. Many were adulterants used for doctoring inferior wines, and severe enactments were passed to prevent such practices. We are not, however, led to believe that artificial wines were manufactured and adulteration practised to the same extent as in our day. A German newspaper[163] recently gave an account of a prosecution in Berlin, in which it was stated that one large store which had been inspected contained only artificial wines, into the manufacture of which the juice of the grape never entered, although the names borne by the labels of the bottles were those of well-known wines.