128 American IIorticuHural Sociefi/. 



Horticultural Hall, 

 Forenoon Session, January 20, 1885. 



The Society convened in Horticultural Hall at 10 a. m., January 

 20, President Earle in the chair. 



Mr. T. Y. iSIunson, of Texas, was introduced and read his pa- 

 per on 



NATIVE GRAPES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



]!Y T. V. :munson, m. so. 



All botanists, who have attempted the classification of the grape genus, 

 have complained of its difficulties, and confusions of one form with another. 

 Many have concluded that its so-called species are only artificial terms to in- 

 dicate certain forms of considerable extent, but that in reality there is no 

 clear separatrix. This is certainly true in one sense— the order of develop- 

 ment in time — as has been proven true of all organic beings, by such vast 

 researches among plants and animals as those of Wallace, Darwin, Hteckel, 

 Walsh and others. According to this, if every individual plant and animal 

 now existing and that has ever existed, were placed side by side according 

 to their affinities and genealogies, the organic kingdom would be one mon- 

 strous tree joined in all its parts by the universal cellular protoplasmic link ; 

 and this tree would be rooted deep upon another infinite inorganic mass of 

 nicely graded and connected crystalline and chemical atoms, each and every 

 link in the universe of matter, varying but a minute degree from its neigh- 

 bor, yet two taken at a distance from each other show proportionate differ- 

 ences. If the intermediate individuals were left out of view, those in com- 

 parison would be considered of different varieties, species, genera, orders, 

 etc., according to the distances apart the units of comparison were taken. 

 If all still lived arid the chain of development seen complete, the fact would 

 not make an ass and a horse, a dog and a wolf, a Caucasian and an African, a 

 Scuppernong and a frost grape any the less different from one another. 



The vicissitudes of time have cut and broken away innumerable branches 

 from the great tree of life. They have fallen, through cliemical change, back 

 into the mineral base, to be again revitalized, not as the same old individuals, 

 but as parts of those still living and multiplying. Repeated upheavals and 

 subsidence of the earth's crust, through millions of years, as we unmistaka- 

 bly learn in geologj^ have been the most jiotent species makers, in a techni- 

 cal sense ; and thus the connecting links, especially where large gaps occur 

 between the living branches, are now out of existence and the separation of 

 the living parts as complete and permanent as though they had never been 

 joined, so far as again intermingling is concerned. 



But long separation of once joined links, under widely different environ- 



