STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 147 



and ill-adapted constitution of the grape, which is unable to 

 accomplish due elaborations under such climatic pressure. It is 

 found, in the great western valley that, in seasons of extensive 

 grape disease, crops cultivated on comparatively light and dry 

 soils, escape disease; could a stronger proof of my general posi- 

 tion be adduced] Judge Conkling, (see the " Country Gentleman" 

 of Sept. 4, 1856,) finds that on Long Island, a deep, coarse, stony 

 soil is available for the culture of the grape. Such also, it is said, 

 is the character of the soil in North Carolina, in the native posi- 

 tions of the Catawba grape. 



(2.) Mechanical culture. — Our climate possessing the charac- 

 ter of great uncertainty, makes all grape culture difficult, espe- 

 cially that of foreign sorts that are constitutionally adapted to 

 one more uniform and less intense. These two facts, the charac- 

 ter of our climate and the constitution of the grape, interact with 

 a soil often too rich, and a course of mechanical culture frequently 

 too stimulating. Hence I would, under ordinary circiunstances, 

 of soil, apply to them only moderate culture. 



(a.) Suppose your grapes in open culture, are well established;' 

 I would defer spring culture until the danger of spring frost is 

 nearly past. Experience shews that much development of the 

 buds before the 25th of May is unsafe at Utica, on the line of 

 43^ north. Grapes here have frequently lost their first germinations 

 from frost as late as the 18th, 22d, and 29th of May in the years 

 from 1842 to 1850. 



(h.) When once culture is begun I wish the early growth to be 

 rapid, while the weather is comparatively cool, as changes in the 

 weather, before the setting of the fruit, are much less harmful 

 than at a later date when the relative proportion of cellular tissue 

 and fluid is much greater. 



(c.) When mid-summer comes I cease culture entirely. The 

 subsequent growth of grass and weeds, though interfering with 

 that of the grape, is yet preferable to the exposure of the soil to 

 the intense heat of a nearly vertical sun, since they shield the 

 soil from its power, and become a cheap and almost perfect sub- 

 stitute for mulching — an application it is often almost impossible 

 to make on an extensive scale by any means cheaply in the power 

 of the cultivator. Nor less is this mode of culture a means of 

 shielding the soil from cold wind in sudden changes of the 



