OF WASHINGTON. 271 



M. Vermorel has much of the American energy and push, and 

 beginning as a poor man, a mechanic, has built up an immense 

 establishment, employing some three hundred hands, chiefly for 

 the manufacture of insecticide and fungicide apparatus. But he 

 is a good deal more than a mere manufacturer of apparatus. He 

 conducts a large private experiment station, the Station Viticole, 

 at Villefranche, with attached vineyards and laboratories, and 

 with a corps of entomologists, chemists, and other experts, at his 

 own expense, and is, furthermore, a most enthusiastic student of 

 the injurious insects as well as of the fungous diseases, methods 

 of culture, etc., of the grape. He is also a most voluminous pub 

 lisher, and a collection of his books and pamphlets and serial 

 journals on the culture of the grape, its diseases and insect ene 

 mies, makes a small library by itself. He also publishes large 

 charts of important injurious insects for use in agricultural schools, 

 etc. The long trip from Paris to Villefranche was undertaken 

 especially to visit this establishment, and a very pleasant and in 

 structive day was spent there. Mr. Vermorel, himself, was absent 

 attending a viticulture convention at Trient, Austria, but he had 

 arranged with his assistants to have the shops and machines thor 

 oughly exploited, and also the viticultural station, laboratory, 

 vineyards, and wine-house, which are located on his estate a few 

 miles out of town. Many of Mr. Vermorel's machines and ideas 

 have been copied by American manufacturers, and it was stated 

 that no benefit had been derived from his attempt to exploit his 

 contrivances on this side of the Atlantic, and especially at the 

 World's Fair, at Chicago, where he made a very large and credit 

 able exhibit, donating the apparatus afterwards to the Department 

 of Agriculture. Several of his later and more complex machines 

 were put in operation, and exhibited a very flattering degree of 

 efficiency. Some of his distributers of liquids and powders are 

 much better than anything of a similar sort that we have here. 

 In his immense factory, with hundreds of machines ready for 

 shipment, one gets a better idea than elsewhere of the univer 

 sality of the practice, in France and adjoining countries, of con 

 trolling insects and fungous diseases by spraying and dusting or 

 the injection of poisons into the soil. Practically all of these 

 machines and methods are for use in vineyards the culture of 

 the vine being the great predominating industry of France, Italy, 



