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A SPIRITUOUS DISCOURSE
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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