270 [February, 



there was much written about our native grapes, which only tended to involve 

 in obscurity a rather plain and easily developed subject. Men unacquainted 

 with botany, gardeners and others, remarkable only for their ignorance, folly 

 and bad faith, gave names to various kinds of grapes, and frequently made a 

 dozen species out of one. These names, barbarous and unmeaning as 

 they are, were never bestowed on the same variety by any two writers ; they 

 saw differences where none existed, and endeavored to account for them by 

 supposing impossibilities. Thus, a variety of V. labrusca, which has been called 

 the Isabella and Catawba grape, and received several other as ridiculous appel- 

 lations, has been considered as a hybrid between a European and one of our 

 native species. This variety has always been said to have been first found in 

 South Carolina, a country where the V. vinifera had at that time seldom or never 

 been cultivated, and where it by no means flourishes, and where likewise the 

 labrusca is not found. Although among some families of plants hybrids occur 

 naturally or may be formed artificially, yet it is difficult to understand how this 

 ever can be the case in the genus Vitis. In forming a hybrid, it is necessary 

 to emasculate the flower which we wish to produce fruit, and to impregnate 

 its pistil with the pollen of some other species; this is impossible in the 

 present instance, on account of the minuteness of the flower and the parts of 

 fructification. If the hybrid be supposed to be formed naturally, how could the 

 anther dust of a cultivated plant be carried in a sufficient quantity from a garden 

 to produce any effect in the thick woods of the Southern States ? 



Botanists have hitherto been able to detect but few species of Vitis in the 

 United States. Michaux, Elliot and others, reckon but four or five in the whole 

 extent of our country. Rafinesque, by believing in the various follies of the day, 

 and led aside by writings which fell into his hands and by the false statements 

 which he collected from different quarters, made forty-one species of this genus, 

 the most of which he had never seen. Although able to investigate and 

 describe as well as any naturalist of his day, he was led astray by an in- 

 satiable desire of making new species, and appropriating to himself every thing 

 that he saw or even heard of in Natural Science, he gave names to many things 

 which never existed, and furnished accounts of them as if he had had them in 

 his possession. Although his lucubrations are little worthy of notice, I have 

 endeavored to identify as many of these numerous species as possible, and to 

 reduce them to some degree of certainty ; guided as well by what I remember 

 to have seen in his possession, as by the short, and, in many instances, very im- 

 perfect descriptions found in his American Manual of Grape Vines ; some I have 

 not been able to determine, but scarcely think them different from others already 

 well known. The number of species now recognized in systematic works is 

 not more than five or six. I have increased this number considerably ; with 

 what propriety is for others to judge. 



In my wanderings through our country, I have, I think, seen two more species, 

 but have no memoranda of their characteristics which allow me to say more 

 than that one was observed in the middle regions of Georgia, which bore grapes 

 of a tolerably large size, in clusters of such density that the berries were pressed 

 into a cubic form. The other was a small grape, of which the inhabitants of 

 the upper part of North Carolina made a considerable quantity of pale red wine. 

 This may be the V. cordifolia of Michaux, which species I have not been able 

 to determine. The description of the last species, V. palmata, is taken in a 

 great measure from recollection, and not from a late examination. 



By the word racemus or raceme, I wish to be always understood to mean the 

 bunches of mature fruit, the true and legitimate meaning of the Latin word. 



1. Vitis labrusca. Foliis lato-cordatis, sublobato-angulatis, aut quinque- 

 lobatis acuminatis, irregulariter eroso-dentatis, supra glabris, subtus irregulari- 

 ter reticulatis, dense tomentosis aut velutinis, pube incana aut rufescente, 

 baccis magnis rotundis aut ovalibus. 



Hab. In the Northern and Middle States. V. sylvestris, occidentalis, et vul- 

 pina, Bartram, in New York Medical Repository, Hexade II, vol. I. V. lati- 

 folia, canina, luteola, rugosa, ferruginea, labruscoides. blanda, prolifera and obo- 



