24 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



TWENTY-FIVE YEARS WITH GRAPES. 

 BY HON. C. D. LAWTON OF LAWTON. 



It is curious to note bow close]}' the experience of men in any line 

 of agricultural industry of today corresponds with that of some other 

 people of some other nation in some other period of the world's history. 

 It would be possible to glean from the contemporary writers of the 

 Koman empire of the year 1, material for an article on grape culture, 

 setting forth the experience and methods of the vineyardists of that 

 time, to be read at a meeting of Michigan horticulturists assembled in 

 the city of Grand Haven in the year 1897, and no one would detect but 

 that it represented the conditions and experience of the growers here 

 today. The men who were engaged in growing grapes on the shores 

 of the Mediterranean and the Adriatic 2000 years ago, as we may learn 

 from the writers of that period, met with similar difficulties and discour- 

 agements and give similar directions in the matter of cultivation and 

 general care of a vineyard as are experienced today by men who are 

 pursuing the like vocation along the shores of lake Michigan and lake 

 Erie and on the banks of the Hudson. 



We have it from the record that is familiar to every one that one of 

 the first operations of Father Noah after leaving the ark was the planting 

 of a vineyard: "And Noah began to be an husbandman and he planted 

 a vineyard," saith the scriptures. And this was long anterior to Roman 

 history, and, probably, even in the time of Noah, the industry was not 

 a new one. It was old even then; and then, as ever, the grape was a 

 favored product of the soil, for it alone is mentioned as the branch 

 of agricultural industry in wiiich the patriarch engaged. Thus, so far as 

 we have any record of the doings of the human race for its maintenance 

 and support, the cultivation of the vine has ever been an important 

 fact in husbandry. In Palestine, in Italy, Spain, France, and Germany, 

 in all parts of the w^orld where fruits may be grown, the universality 

 of grape culture and the high esteem in which the fruit has ever been 

 held testify to its great excellence and superior value. The cultivation 

 of the vine from time immemorial has been a chief employment of the 

 children of the east, and to sit beneath the vine and fig tree has ever 

 been a favorite dream of felicity in the minds of the human race. Men 

 in every age have dwelt with longing upon that condition of life which 

 is symbolized by the vine as among the happiest allotted to mortals. 

 The vine, in all ages, has been the emblem of plenty. 



In this country, with our abundant and varied productions, so far 

 in excess of our capacity for consumption, it is not possible to fully 

 appreciate the importance of the grape to the people in other lands. 

 There are regions in the old world, nationalities or considerable por- 

 tions of countries, in which the loss of the grape means far more than 

 the restriction of prosperity, for it means the loss of a prime necessity 

 of life, of a chief article for sustaining the existence of numberless 

 human beings. In this rountrv, which is, compared to the old nations 

 of the world, only in its infancy, the grape has already become a leading 



