Published monthly by The Agassiz Association, ArcAdiA ■ Sound Beach, Connecticut, 



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Entered as Second-Class Matter June 12, 1909, at Sound Beach Post Office, under Act of March 3. 1897. 



'olume 



X 



OCTOBER, 1917 



Number 5 



Experiments in Grape Growing. 



By Edward F. Bigelow, ArcAdiA, Sound Beach Connecticut. 



The history of the early settlers' at- 

 temn+s at grape growing in this country 

 recalls the pathos of the early attempts 

 at inventing the typewriter, in that all 

 these experiments show the thick-head- 

 edness of human beings, and how diffi- 

 cult it has been for the race to learn 

 some of the simplest things. All the 

 histories of the invention of the type- 

 writer agree that the final achievement 

 was delayed for nearly a hundred 

 years because no inventor could disa- 

 buse his mind of the notion that the 

 keyboard must be like that of the 

 piano with keys black and white and 

 similarly arranged. 



For more than two hundred years 

 settlers in the eastern part of the Uni- 

 ted States sacrificed an enormous 

 amount of time and money on account 

 of their thirst for wine. Vineyard af- 

 ter vineyard was established with the 

 Vitis vinifera, the wine grape of France. 

 Little was heard of grape growing east 

 of the Rockies so long as the experi- 

 menters persisted with this impossible 

 Vitis vinifera ; that is, in trying to make 

 the wine grape succeed. It has suc- 

 ceeded in only one place in this coun- 

 try east of the Rockies- Louisiana, 



when owned by France, grew grapes 

 and made wine in such quantities that 

 the French government forbade wine 

 grape growing in the colony. But in 

 New England and the Middle States 

 the French grapevine is entirely out 

 of place. The history of these experi- 

 ments is one long series of disappoint- 

 ment after disappointment and tragedy 

 after tragedy, yet with what commen- 

 dable zeal did those early experiment- 

 ers struggle with the inevitable fail- 

 ure. Nicholas Longworth of Cincin- 

 nati, Ohio, experimented with Euro- 

 pean grapes for forty years and con- 

 cluded in 1846 that it is impossible to 

 grow foreign grapes in America. He 

 obtained more than fifteen thousand 

 plants from abroad and went to enor- 

 mous expense in trenching the land 

 with a special form of drainage, en- 

 riching it with soil and with sand even 

 three feet deep. He planted a great 

 variety of foreign wine grapes. Every 

 one failed ; not a single plant was left 

 in his vineyards. He then came to 

 the correct conclusion that grape grow- 

 ing, especially in the eastern part of 

 the United States, must depend on the 

 cultivation of native grapes alone and 



Copyright 191" by The Agassiz Association, ArcAdiA: Sound Beach, Conn. 



