126 ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 



1852, p. 354 — 372. It is not my design in this paper to write a 

 treatise on the culture of the grape, a thing which has already 

 been well done once and again. Still less is it my design to write 

 a treatise on the culture of the sugar cane, a labor to which my 

 experience is altogether inadequate. My simple object is to shew 

 by direct and analogical facts and reasonings the nature^ cause and 

 remedy of these diseases. My habit has been for many years, to 

 journalize the weather with reference to the diseases of vegeta- 

 tion. The older cultivators of the grape and the sugar cane may 

 perhaps detect minor errors of fact and theory in this paper; if 

 so, let them not lose sight of my main design. Let them remem- 

 ber also that I tread new ground, no clear and lengthy exhibition 

 of the cause of these diseases having ever to my knowledge, h||en 

 written. If these views are found to be true, with reference to 

 the grape and the sugar cane, their wide application to theoreti- 

 cal and practical terra-culture generally will be most obvious^ 



3* 



I.— PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. 



1. Indispensible conditions of vegetable growth. — a. Soil. 

 — The soil becomes at once the mechanical support and local 

 home of the plant, as well as the soui-ce of its twelve, (more or 

 less) inorganic elements essential to the growth of all vegetation. 

 These elements must exist in the soil, not only in fact, but also in 

 an available condition. Practically considered, there must also 

 exist, in every good soil, an amount of vegetable or animal mat- 

 ter suflB.cient to benefit the soil mechanically, as well as to afford, 

 in part at least, the four organic elements of vegetable growth. 



b. Water must co-exist with the foregoing, and in the atmos- 

 phere, to become in part, the source of nutrition, to act as the 

 solvent of elementary matters and to become their carrier in the 

 circulation of the plant. 



c. Mr must co-exist with both of the foregoing, partly as a 

 source of food, and partly, like water, as a solvent and carrier 

 of other things. 



d. Light, heat, and possibly other imponderable elements 

 or influences of nature, must be present as stimulants indispen- 

 sible to all vegetable life and progress. 



e. Culture, though not indispensible to all vegetable growth, 



• I have treated these two diseases associately because I consider tbem similar in their 

 causes, manifestations and remedy. 



