64 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



good deal of the native perfume. Skin thick, black, covered with a bloom. 

 Flesh sweet, moderately juicy, with considerable toughness and acidity in its 

 pulp. Eipe among the very earliest. An early variety for marketing, but too 

 liable to drop its Iruit from the bunch as soon as fully ripe. Hardy, vigorous, 

 productive." 



Coming to the notice of the public as this variety did, just at the dawning 

 of the era of improvement in the native grape, it was placed in competition 

 with Diana, which preceded it; — with Concord, with which it was cotempor- 

 aneous, and also with Delaware, which, in its long and doubtful struggle for 

 popular appreciation, both preceded and followed it ; to say nothing of Allen's 

 Hybrid, llebecca, Crevelling and others, all of which were its superiors so far 

 as mere quality is concerned, it never assumed the prominence of many of its 

 competitors; and indeed its lack of high quality would long ago have con- 

 signed it to the rejected list, but for its great beauty wheu upon the vine, 

 together with its extreme earliness, and the vigor and hardiness of the plant ; 

 which enables it to meet the kind of management practiced by the great 

 mass of planters, and also to fill a place as a market and family fruit for which 

 it has, as vt-t, no proper competitor; although there are strong reasons to hope 

 that ere long it will be compelled to step aside to make way for more worthy 

 aspirants ; and hence it is doubtless wisdom on the part of planters to employ 

 it but sparsely, as indeed they generally seem to be already doing. Ripens in 

 Michigan about the first week in September. 



THE DELAYv^AKE GRAPE. 



Probably no one of our native fruits presents a more interesting and instruc- 

 tive illustration of the slowness of the public mind to appreciate quality as 

 distinguished from mere quantity in fruit, and of the struggle and ultimate 

 triumph of eminent merit over multiplex and varied difficulties than does the 

 Delaware ; while it at the same time demonstrates how easily a gem of eminent 

 worth may be hidden away for an indefinite period, waiting an appreciative eye 

 (or taste) to si)y out its real value, and thrust it forth to challenge the apprecia- 

 tion of the world at large. 



This grape was first figured and described in the Horticulturist, then under 

 the editorial management of P. Barry, of the Mount Hope Nurseries of Roch- 

 ester, New York, iu the November issue for the year 185o, from specimens 

 furnished by the introducer, Mr. A. Thompson, of Delaware, Ohio, the place 

 where it first attracted the attention of pomologists, and from which by com- 

 mon consent it has derived its name. 



Mr. Barry in noticing it states that about three years before it had been sent 

 to him from the Ohio Fruit, Growers' Convention, by M. B. Bateham then 

 connected with the Ohio Cultivator; and it had doubtless, at, if not before 

 that time, been noticed in the Ohio papers. Mr. Barry arrived at the con- 

 clusion that it was an American grape; although the more common belief at 

 that time was that it was a European, — either Traminer or Red Resling, — the 

 former being one of the most famous of the German wine grapes. This sup- 

 position was strongly confirmed by the evidence of an old and intelligent vine- 

 dresser, fresh from Germany, who thought it to be the Traminer. It was also 

 for a time regarded as a foreign grape by the late Nicholas LongTorth, of 

 Cincinnati, who had expended large sums of money in the futile eff'ort to 

 acclimate the European grape in America for wine purposes; and who, for 

 that purpose, had tested almost all the accessible foreign varieties in his 

 grounds, meeting with utter failure in the attempt. 



