134 ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 



the prune plum has never succeeded so well in the United States 

 of America, as in France and Germany. 



These preliminary considerations have been treated briefly, 

 and some of them with few illustrations, because they are 

 addressed to those to whom these subjects are familiar. 



II.— DISEASES OF THE GRAPE AND THE SUGAR CANE, 



WITH THE REMEDY. 



1. Diseases, &c., of the Grape. — The wine grape of Europe 

 has recently shown liabilities to disease. The same grape, when 

 transported to the United States of America, especially to the 

 northern and north-eastern parts, is even more diseased than in 

 its native climes. Nor are our own native varieties wholly 

 exempt, especially when subjected to the same course of culture. 

 I do not deem it needful to describe the outward manifestations 

 of disease, nor decide what portion of them may be referable to 

 the action of insects. They are usually familiar to the cultivator. 



An inquiry into the probable causes of the disease of the grape 

 will lead me to contemplate 



1. Soil. — a. Soil chemically considered. — Of the inorganic ele- 

 ments essential to the constitution of vegetable tissue, especially 

 of the grape, one of the most common and indispensible is potash. 

 The extreme destitution of this, or of any other element in a soil, 

 would undoubtedly result in the diminished health of the grape. 

 I think, however, that the diminished proportion of important 

 elements in a soil results oftener in the dwarfed growth of vege- 

 tation than in its diseased condition. However this may be, the 

 fact that often grapes are diseased in soils well constituted by 

 nature or art, leads us to look for the more prominent causes of 

 grape disease in some other connection. 



Indeed, without denying that some diseases of vegetation are 

 traceable to the total or partial absence of some important element 

 in the soil, it seems more consonant with a gracious Providence, 

 that the poverty of soils, in the more important elements, should 

 result in a dwarfed rather than in a diseased growth. Truth, in 

 this line, is taught by exj^erience and not by revelation. In an 

 ignorant' state of society men very readily learn the general 

 theory, or, at least, the practice of manuring; but the application 

 of such specific manures as shall bring out the richest results of 



