FRUITS. 117 



glass ; have sometimes layered vines, but think one way about 

 as good as the other, though it is much the quickest and cheap- 

 est way to grow vines from a one or two eye cutting. I 

 should recommend jDhmting them when two or three years 

 old. I should always prefer a light, dry soil for the grape, 

 with a south or south-east exposure, and should never manure 

 the soil with any animal manure, but with potash in the shape 

 of dry wood ashes or dissolved potash, lime, bone-dust, etc. 

 For vineyard planting I should prefer two stakes of cedar, or 

 some other durable wood, set say three feet apart, and the 

 vine planted between them and trained around both. I should 

 always trim in the fall, during pleasant weather, just after the 

 fall of the leaf. 



We have not many bearing vines now, as the past two 

 or three seasons have not been favorable to their ripening. 

 Grapes to ripen well in this vicinity require a dry, warm sea- 

 son, without frost till very late. 1 do not think the climate 

 here as good to ripen grapes in as it is farther west in the same 

 latitude, say in New York or northern Ohio. For my own 

 planting I should prefer our very best natives, as Concord, 

 Hartford Prolific, etc. Those that have foreign blood in them, 

 as the Rogers' Hybrids and a host of others, may do well for 

 a few years, but are short-lived at the best ; this has been my 

 experience. We all hope for a good native early grape, say 

 two or three weeks earlier than the Concord and of as sfood 

 quality as that variety, but we have not found it yet. Of 

 course these remarks apply wholly to out-door cultivation, 

 without any protection or glass. 



I should recommend for this county the Concord, Hartford 

 Prolific, Clinton and Isabella in very warm, protected local- 

 ities ; the same for Diana, Delaware, Adirondack, etc. We 

 hope something from the new varieties, as Cambridge, Croton, 

 Moore's Early, and some of Bull's new seedlings ; but my own 

 experience with all the Rogers', Eumelan, Delaware, Rebecca, 

 Allen's Hybrid, lona, Israella, Crevelling, etc., has not been 

 such as would warrant me in recommendino; them for general 

 cultivation in Essex County. 



I believe we can raise peaches in this county as well as 

 ever, unless something unforeseen should happen to the trees, 

 for they now look perfectly healthy, at least in this vicinity, 



