138 ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW- YORK 



much hurt in wood. The native were injured decidedly, but much 

 less than the foreign sorts. I had set five grafts, on the third of 

 April, of a new seedling from a foreign sort. These grafts had 

 made four or five vines, each of from four to six feet in length, 

 some of these being as large at the bottom as one's thumb. One 

 of them had, moreover, "shown two clusters of flowers. So severe 

 was the mildew on these, that when trimmed in the fall, they 

 gave doubtful promise of life, and in the next spring were dead, 

 root and branch. 



During the same summer my plums, grown in similar soil, 

 .were extensively mildewed, dropping many of their leaves in 

 August. The consequence was the loss of nearly all their fruit 

 by rot, or shriveling in an immature state. At the close of the 

 season, winter apples, walnuts, cabbage and turnips were found 

 less sound than usual. 



(c.) The season of 1851 was very similar in character and results 

 to that of 1850, except that the morbid weather began one month 

 earlier, and produced its effect correspondingly earlier. 



(d.) Such of these vines as escaped the bad effects of these two 

 years, with no great loss of wood, yielded enormous crops of fruit 

 in 1852, and were very healthy in leaf and fruit. The reason of 

 this marked difference was obvious at the time. The latter year 

 was marked among many for its steady genial weather. 



(e.) It should be particularly remarked that native varieties, 

 such as the Isabella and Cataw^ba, nay, even the Fox grape, did 

 not wholly escape disease in 1850 and 1851. The amount of 

 mildew on the leaf was trivial, but the berry was often turned 

 brown and unnaturally hardened. Such berries often gained their 

 full size, and did not rot; yet they never softened, nor became 

 eatable. 



(/.) The wood, in most of these cases of grape disease, appeared 

 more or less discolored in the autumn trimming, showing that its 

 advancement was suddenly checked, in an immature state, at the 

 time the mildew invaded it. 



(g.) The potato also, during these two years, suffered in a man- 

 ner exactly parallel with the grape, by mildew on its foliage and 

 seed balls, the latter also becoming brown and hard, as it occurred 

 in the case of the grape. In the autumn the tubers were found 

 diseased. 



