1903 The Flowing Bowl by Edward Spencer

A SPIRITUOUS DISCOURSE 73 But if you want the best French brandy, distilled from the luscious grape, see that you get it; and let your vision be in thorough working order. With the exception of the good, conscientious spirit-distillers, all French houses import potato-spirit in large quantities from Germany, and re-ship it to the home of the brave and free as superior cognac. This alone would seem sufficient excuse for another invasion of France ; although these evil-minded distillers seek to justify their actions by blam ing the phylloxera^ a little insect which has laboured more assiduously in the cause of temperance—by destroying the main source of intemperance—than Sir Wilfrid Lawson himself. " The ravages of thephylloxera" say the distillers, in effect, " compel us to employ other materiel^ in order to fulfil our cognac contracts with the merchants of the perfidious isle." It is related of a theatrical "property-man" that, upon being rebuked by the tragedian for making a snowstorm out of brown, instead of white, paper, he replied curtly: " It was the only paper I had; and if you can't snow white you must snow brown." This excuse is on a par with that urged on behalf of the German potato-spirit. Phylloxera vastatrix (whynot devastatrix?) has cost France, it is said, a pecuniary loss far exceed ing that of the Franco-Prussian war. The little monster was discovered in North America in 1854, and whether the discoverer or one of his friends brought the vine-killer on a holiday-trip to Europe, or whether it worked its own passage will never be known. But certain it is that the