136 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



and we hie with rapid footsteps to the southern-bound train, ever and anon 

 casting a look behind toward the graceful scenery we were permitted no longer 

 to behold. 



AT ADRIAX. — SIGLER'S GRAPE HOUSE. 



On arriving at Adrian we were met at the depot by Dr. D. K. Underwood, a 

 member of our committee who escorted us to his residence. On our way we 

 stopped to see the Concord grape vine of Mr. Bury, that was fruiting amber 

 colored fox grapes, an account of Avhich has been the rounds of the agricul- 

 tural press. We found the grapes, as the doctor informed us, fox grapes, re- 

 sembling the old Connecticut fox grape. This is evidently a grafted vine — the 

 Concord cane, or graft, dying, and the vine sprouting again below the graft. 

 There are numberless cases of this kind happening every season. I have a 

 like case on my own grounds; but these Adrian people will have it that 

 through some freak of nature this Concord vine has gone to bearing fox 

 grapes. "We decline to discuss the matter, and so let it end ; perhaps another 

 season this foolish vine may behave better, and again produce Concords, or 

 some variety better still. 



Mr. A. Sigler of this city had entered a fruit garden in class 34, which 

 proved on examination to consist almost entirely of foreign grapes grown un- 

 der glass. It did not seem appropriately to belong to this class. It was trans- 

 ferred and made a special class — Xo. 35. Mr. Sigler has been remarkably suc- 

 cessful in the growing of foreign grapes. He is a jeweler, and has an exten- 

 sive business, — the largest establishment of the kind, I believe, in the city, — 

 and from the leisure hours spared from this business has built, with his own 

 hands, about 1,200 square feet of glass, prepared the border, and planted, 

 trained, and attended personally to the entire management of the vines from 

 first to last. Thirty-four varieties of foreign, with a few natives for experi- 

 ment, were enclosed in this grapery. Xearly all the most popular of the older 

 varieties were in the collection, with many of the newer sorts. At the head 

 of the list stands that indispensable variety, even to the smallest collection, 

 the Black Hamburg, followed by Wilmot's Black Hamburg, White Hamburg, 

 White Nice, Eose Chasselas, White Muscat of Alexandria, Black Prince, 

 Bla;ck St. Peters, Barbarossa, Bowood, Muscat, etc. The newer sorts no- 

 ticed were Due de Magenta, Lady Downes, Mrs. Prince's Muscat, Trenthani 

 Black, Alicante, Champion Hamburg, etc. Of the native varieties none bore 

 evidence of success under the close confinement of house culture, and their 

 places should be filled with the better of the foreign sorts. In the way of 

 management, no portion of this house was arranged to pursue the forcing 

 plan. It is what would be termed a cold grapery. There are too many va- 

 rieties, and I advise Mr. Sigler to throw at least half of them out, and two- 

 thirds would be better still — one Black Hamburg is of more value than ten 

 White Hamburgs, or an equal number of White Nice, and so of many other 

 varieties besides. Mr. Sigler was, however, experimenting with a plan of heat- 

 ing by a subterranean furnace, with a view of using a part of the house for 

 forcing, the result of which has not as yet been fully determined. Hundreds 

 of pounds of fine clusters, some of prodigious size, were still on the vines, 

 and your committee availed themselves of the profuse generosity of the pro- 

 prietor in testing their merits, until I noticed — well — that our chairman 

 (Brother Betts is an ardent lover of grapes) began to assume aldermanic pro- 

 portions. But little trouble has been met with here, under the watchful eye 



