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ANNUAL MEETING. 141 



Following Mr. Partridge's essay, the president rsad the following paper 

 upon 



THE VINE. 



ITS HISTORY. 



We may easily iin.igine that; the vine was one of "the trees of the garden, 

 whicli man, in liis pristine state, was required to dress and keep, and the sup- 

 position may be equally natural that its twining branches and abundant foliage 

 may have supplied his chosen shelter, if, indeed, shelter were needful during 

 this his earliest horticultural experience. 



However tliis may be, sacred history informs us tliat one of tlie first acts of 

 man, after the tlood, was to plant a vineyard. 



Phin, in his work on Open Air Grape Culture, cliapter 1st, says: "Records 

 of its culture are found in most of the poems and sculpture of antiquity. The 

 shield of Achilles represented a vine-gathering, and Herodotus and Theo- 

 plirastus speak of the culture of the vine in Egypt, and on the very oldest 

 Greek tombs are found pictures representing the vine harvest. Pliny enters 

 fully into the natural history of the vine, and describes a variety witii berries 

 shaped like the finger, while the second book of Virgil's Georgics forms no 

 mean treatise on practical viti-culture." 



Nearly 1,500 years before Christ the Israelitish spies cut, at the brook 

 Eschol, a single cluster of grapes, which they bore away, " between two, upon 

 a staff." 



The native country of the grape, upon the Eastern continent, is a matter of 

 great uncertainty. Inasmuch as their numerous varieties are all referable to 

 the single species (vinifera) it seems altogether reasonable to suppose it indig- 

 enous in some definite region, and since it is found, in the wild state, in the 

 most perfect condition in the region southward from the Caspian Sea, this is, 

 by some, thought to be its original home. 



The mythological account of the marches of Bacchus is supposed to relate to 

 the extension of the culture of the vine from Asia into Europe, where it was gen- 

 erally introduced as early at least as 600 years before Christ. During the reign 

 of the emperor Domitian, he, fearing a scarcity of grain, in consequence of the 

 extensive planting of the grape, issued a restrictive or prohibitory edict (A. D. 

 81), which was continued in force a lonaf time, through the fear that the 

 abundance of fine wine might tempt the barbarians of the north to invade the 

 country. After its introduction into Europe its culture soon spread through- 

 out the region along the Mediterranean Sea. It was introduced into Southern 

 Germany about the third century before Christ, and in the days of Charle- 

 magne had become generally distributed throughout France. It was also 

 introduced into England by the Romans. 



The genus Vitis includes not only the European grape (vinifera), whicli 

 proves to be unfitted to the climate of the eastern United States, but also the 

 northern fox grape (Labrusca), the summer grape (Aestivalis), the winter or 

 frost grape (cordifolia or riparia), all which are indigenous in portions of the 

 northern United States, and the Muscadine or southern fox grape (Vulpina), 

 which includes the Scuppernong, and which is mainly confined to the southern 

 United States. 



"With the exception of vinifera, all are indigenous in the United States east- 

 erly of the Mississippi river. Farther west, in the mountain region, and 



