AMERICAN GRAPES 



347 



lacking sweetness and richness, they do hot cloy the appetite so quickly. 

 The bunches and berries of the vinifera grapes are larger, more attract- 

 ive, and are borne in greater quantities. The pulp, seeds and skins are 

 somewhat objectionable in all of the native species and scarcely so at 

 all in Vitis vinifera. The berries of the native grapes shell from the 

 stems so quickly that the bunches do not ship well. The vines of the 

 Old World grapes are more compact in habit and require less pruning 

 and training than do those of the native grapes, and, as a species, prob- 

 ably through long cultivation, they are adapted to more kinds of soil, 

 to greater differences in environment, and are more easily propagated 

 than the American species. 



Because of these points of superiority in the Old World grape, since 

 Valk, Allen and Rogers showed the way, American grape-breeders have 

 sought to unite by hybridization the good characters of Vitis vinifera 

 with those of the American grapes. Nearly half of the fifteen hun- 

 dred grapes cultivated in eastern America have more or less vinifera 

 blood in them. Yet despite the efforts of breeders few of these hybrids 

 have commercial value. Whether because they are naturally better 

 fixed, or long cultivation has more firmly established them, the vine 



Leaf and Fruit of a White Cultivated Labrusca. 



