To produce grapes without stones the lower end of the slip was split, and the pith carefully extracted with an ear-pick.[1521] It was then bound round with a papyrus leaf, thrust into a sea-onion and thus planted. Vines producing medicinal grapes were created by withdrawing the pith from the lower part of the slip, but without splitting, and introducing certain drugs into the hollow,[1522] closing up the extremity with papyrus and thus setting it in the earth. The wine, the grape, the leaves, and even the ashes of such a vine were thought to be a remedy against the bite of serpents and dogs, though no security against hydrophobia. Another mode of producing stoneless grapes was to cut short all the branches of a vine already growing, extract the pith from the ends of them, and fill up the cavity once a-week with the juice of sylphion,[1523] binding them carefully to props that the liquor might not escape. A method was also in use of producing green and purple grapes on the same cluster.[1524] This was to take two slips as nearly as possible of the same size, the one of the white, the other of the black grape, and, having split them down the middle, carefully to fit the halves to their opposites, so that the buds, when divided, should exactly meet. They were then bound tight together with papyrus thread, and placed in the earth in a sea-onion,[1525] whose glutinous juice aided the growing together of the severed parts. Sometimes instead of slips, offshoots removed from the trunk of a large vine, with roots attached to them, were used. On other occasions the vine was grafted, like any other fruit-tree, on a variety of stocks,[1526] each modifying the quality and flavour of the grape. Thus a vine grafted on a myrtle-stock,[1527] produced fruit partaking of the character of the myrtle-berry. Grafted on a cherry-tree, its grapes underwent a different change, and ripened, like cherries, in the spring. As the clay encircling the junctures of these grafts grew dry, and somewhat cracked in hot summers, it was customary for gardeners to moisten them every evening with a sponge dipped in water.[1528] ----- Footnote 1521: Geop. iv. 7. Mention of the stoneless grapes of Persia occurs in many travellers, and, by Mr. Fowler, one of the most recent, are enumerated under the name of _kismis_, among the choicest fruits of that country. Three Years in Persia, vol. i. p. 323. It may here be remarked, that certain sorts of vines, among others the Capneion, produced sometimes white clusters, sometimes purple. Theophrast. Hist. Plant. ii. 3. 2. Cf. de Caus. Plant. v. 3. 1. κ. τ. λ. Footnote 1522: Geop. iv. 8. Footnote 1523: Geop. iv. 7. Footnote 1524: Geop. iv. 14. Footnote 1525: It has been remarked also by ancient naturalists that a fig-tree planted in a sea-onion, grows quicker and is more free from vermin. Theoph. Hist. Plant. i. 5. 5. Footnote 1526: Colum. v. 11.