STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 179 



of elaborating machinery, appropriate soil, and especially appro- 

 priate climatic influence. Now, this last circumstance is what 

 we are least able to control. Fruit trees of rare quality may be 

 imported, and the soil can usually be artificially made appropriate, 

 but we cannot control the climate. The inference from all this 

 may be that, with such a climate as this, we may never be 

 able to realize habitually the culture of a grape at once hardy, 

 early, and yet equal to the Golden Chasselas, Black Hamburg or 

 Hesperione. On the other hand, our possession of such fruits as 

 the Spitzenburgh and Swaar apples, Seckel and Virgalieu pears, 

 Washington Bolmar and Green Gage plums, ought to encourage 

 our wise and patient efforts in the direction of acquiring such a 

 grape as has been suggested. 



I may be allowed, in conclusion, to allude to what has been so 

 often and variously hinted in the preceding essay, that the pro- 

 curement and permanent enjoyment, in open culture of such a 

 grape, as has been supposed, must depend on the exercise of uni- 

 versal moderation in every office of culture that relates to it. 

 Highly stimulating culture, in such a climate as ours, makes war 

 upon nature, or rather nature's God, when applied to the grape. 



The renewal of the Sugar Cane. — a. Here the labor of repro- 

 duction, whenever good seed has once been obtained, would pro- 

 bably be much less than in the case of the grape. As the Indian 

 corn, broom corn and china sugar cane exactly reproduce them- 

 selves from seed, so doubtless would the sugar cane. 



h. Indian corn has a wonderful power of speedy adaptation to 

 length of season, when transfered from place to place. The law 

 of its production seems to be that, where it can find even nine or 

 ten weeks of dry, hot weather, as in the valley of the Red river 

 in lat51°, and in that of the St. Lawrence in 47*^, there it can 

 be produced. (See report of Patent Office 1853, p. 34G, &c.) 



c. The sugar cane, on the other hand, requires constitutionally 

 a liigher d<'gree of heat, and aside from that, does not probably 

 possess the same i)liancy of adaptation to shorter seasons, and 

 thus f)r b(»tli reasons can never perhaps be carried as far north 

 as the Indian corn. 



d. Could it, however, by reprotluction from the seed, be brouiicht 

 within the limits of six nK>nths of "^rowtli, instead of requiring, 

 as now, nine months in Louisiana, (Patent Office report of 1848, 



