412 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



tell the truth and be very careful as to their judt^ment; for if once they 

 begin to trifle with conscience aud judgment, both will soon be gone and 

 finally their business will have gone too. 



The tribunal of public opinion is the highest court in the land. Its 

 processes are not executed by sheriffs or by marshals ; its edicts are not 

 recorded in a clerk's book ; its verdicts are informal, but its judgments 

 are self-executing. No nurseryman's appeal to that court is a safe one 

 unless it is just. Then, and not otherwise, may he appeal to truth and 

 to time. 



WHICH IS OUR BEST GRAPE ? 



IJY L. GEIGER, I500NVILLE, MO. 



After having examined the leading price lists of the grape nurseries 

 in Missouri and from abroad, and considered their merits and the prac- 

 ticability of planting at large on our Missouri hills, I am at a loss to tell 

 you "which is the best." 



Every kind and every variety has its merits and demerits. Mis- 

 souri is a large, a great state, and within its boundaries lays a great 

 wealth of undeveloped riches. It is traversed by one of the greatest 

 rivers on this Continent, and running eastwardly to the waters of the 

 mighty Mississippi, and situated midway between the Atlantic ocean on 

 the east, and the great Pacific on the west, between the great lakes on 

 the north, and the balmy waters of the Gulf on the south, it is destined 

 through its central location to become the metropolitan state of the 

 Union. Only sixty-eight years a state and a member of the proud 

 union of the States, it has shown to the world its capability of pro- 

 ducing the best apple and white wine on this Continent, and the best red 

 wine on the globe. At the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, the 

 Missouri white wines were all taken by the Chinese Ambassador for the 

 royal tables of his Emperor and the nobilitj- of that ancient country, be- 



