chaptp:k XV 



GRAPE-BREEDING 



Chance, pure and simple, has been the greatest factor in 

 the production of varieties of American grapes. From the 

 millions of wild plants, an occasional grape of pre-eminent merit 

 has caught the eye of the cultivator and has been brought into 

 the vineyard to be the progenitor of a new \'ariety. Or in the 

 vineyards, more often in near-by waste lands, from the prodigious 

 number of seedlings that spring up, pure or cross-bred, a plant 

 of merit becomes the foundation of a new variety. An inter- 

 esting fact in the domestication of the four chief species of 

 American grapes is that none came under cultivation until 

 forms of them, striking in value, had been found. Catawba, 

 representing the Labrusca grapes; the Scuppernong, the 

 Rotundifolias ; Norton, from Vitis CBstivalis; Delaware and 

 Herbemont from the Bourquiniana grapes; and Clinton from 

 ]^itis vulpiua, are, after a century, scarcely excelled, although 

 in each species there are now many new varieties. 



That our best grapes have come from chance is not because 

 of a lack of human effort to produce superior varieties. Of all 

 fruits, the grape has received most attention in America from 

 the generation of plant-breeders just passing. Grape-breeders 

 have produced 2000 or more varieties, a medley of the hetero- 

 geneous characters of a dozen species. That so many of this 

 vast number are worthless is due more to a lack of knowledge 

 of plant-breeding than to a lack of effort, for the order and 

 system in plant-breeding that now prevail, disclosed by recent 

 brilliant discoveries, were unknown to grape-breeders of the 

 last century. 



T 273 



