STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 95 



munity has been asking for too much. It may be well enough to 

 ask for a law against adulterated vinegar, but it is useless to ask 

 for a law against wine vinegars. 



President Dunlap — The motion before the house was not for 

 the suppression of wine vinegars, but against the adulteration of 

 vinegars. Motion carried. 



■'o 1 



REPORT ON GRAPES. 



BY A. H. WORTHEX, WARSAW. 



Seeing my name on your program as one of the Committee on 

 Grapes for 1889, I presume I shall be expected to say something. 

 But while appreciating the honor, and thanking you for the same, 

 I do not understand just why you did it, when there are so many 

 larger grape growers than I am. I really do not feel competent to 

 "wrestle" with a subject so much bigger than myself, and when 

 anything has gotten away with me as effectually as grape growing 

 has, I do not like to take my revenge by "going around and talk- 

 ing about it," and I am so much more accustomed to the use of 

 the "plow share and pruning hook," I exchange them for the pen 

 "with fear and tremble" as to the result. While it is true, con- 

 sidering that I have been a "laborer in the vineyard" for over 

 twenty years, that I should know "something about" grapes, I am 

 really astonished, when I think of the amount of information that 

 has been poured into me during that time, how little I know. And 

 when that is spread over this great field, you will find it "decidedly 

 thin." Perhaps in this as in political appointments, "locality" 

 had to be considered. In that case, I assure you that you made 

 no mistake, as my "locality" is without any doubt the "paradise 

 of the fruit grower." You will not consider this extravagant 

 praise, when I tell you that last year there were more than two 

 hundred wagon loads of Ben Davis apples grown here. Most of 

 them were marketed, as the producers had an abundance of other 

 vegetables that they preferred for winter use. 



I never expected to have an opportunity to "talk back" at you, 

 so I will take advantage of this call, to do a little skirmishing 

 around the outskirts of your encampment before I "open" on you 

 with "grape." But if I should attempt to "get even" with the fra- 

 ternity, for what I have suffered in that direction, I would occupy 

 the entire three days of your meeting. I have no fruit to sell, as 

 a party did at one of your meetings that I attended several years 

 ago, and who, unfortunately, was on the program to "open the 

 battle" on the morning that I was present. "I was a stranger 

 and they took me in," and seated me near the platform, and I 

 afterwards discovered that the "reserved seats" were nearest the 



