PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING. US- 



planet, by simple action and interaction of the affinities and repulsions of 

 the various materials of earth upon one another. Some products are sour, 

 bitter, poisonous, hideous; some sweet, luscious, wholesome, beautiful. 

 Experience has taught us that new combinations and new results are capa- 

 ble of being made ad infinitum, and that the very life of our civilization 

 stands upon intelligent selection and breeding of animals and food-and- 

 beauty-producing plants, cultivated among us, still further aided by 

 mechanical and artistic invention. 



We can truthfully say that were the inventors and originators stilled 

 entirely, and all persons required to simply operate with what we have, 

 and to seek for nothing new, that progress would at once cease, and decay 

 would speedily follow, for the old would not be capable of meeting the 

 new natural conditions ever unfolding. 



By viewing the past and its products we can the better perceive in what 

 way to point our experiments for best success in the future. Hence I 

 present the most recent and thoroughly studied classification of natural 

 specific grape productions, so that experimenters may the better join 

 hands with Nature and entice her to give forth still more of sweetness, 

 of refined aroma, of lusciousness, of healthful food, of purifying beauty, 

 enabling still more people to live happily upon the same extent of land, 

 so far as the grape enters the problem. 



There are in North America, and nearly all of them in the United 

 States, some twenty or more species of wild grape, and millions of varie- 

 ties of each species, as no two wild vines bear identically the same 

 kind of fruit, while in all the balance of the world besides there are only 

 six or eight distinct species. 



THE TWO SECTIONS OB SUB-GENERA. 



The genus is composed of two sub-genera, namely: 



Section 1., the true grapes, is botanically designated Envitis. This sec- 

 tion comprises all vines having shreddy bark, shredding in flakes more or 

 less, with tendrils forked and cluster in true thyrses — that is, where the 

 central axis {rachis) has many subdivisions (pedunclets), all along the 

 ractiis, each pedunclet bearing a number of pedicles, each with a single 

 minute flower at summit, followed by a berry. Some have the berries 

 very small, others large; some ripen very earh , others very late. 



Section II., the Muscadine or wartywood grapes, is botanically desig- 

 nated Puncticulosis. This group comprises all vines having warty, closely 

 clinging, non-fibrous bark, with simple tendrils and clusters in cymes — 

 that is where all the berries hang in nearly the same plane, and are few in 

 number. It contains only two species, confined to the southern part of 

 the United States, one of them extending into Mexico and Central 

 America. 



Section I. I divide into seven series of species, found in America, and 

 there are two other series found in Asia, 



All the species of section II are in one series. 



