THE GRAPES OF NEW YORK. 23 



Sweetwater grape is not more hardy with me than it was thirty years since, 

 and does not bear as well. I have tried them in all soils and with all 

 exposures. 



" I obtained 5,000 plants from Madeira, 10,000 from France; and one-half 

 of them, consisting of twenty varieties of the most celebrated wine grapes 

 from the mountains of Jura, in the extreme northern' part of France, where 

 the vine region ends; I also obtained them from the vicinity of Paris, Bor- 

 deaux, and from Germany. I went to the expense of trenching one hundred 

 feet square on a side hill, placing a layer of stone and gravel at the bottom, 

 with a drain to carry ofE the water, and to put in a compost of rich soil and 

 sand three feet deep, and planted on it a great variety of foreign wine grapes. 

 All failed ; and not a single plant is left in my vineyards. I would advise the 

 cultivation of native grapes alone, and the raising of new varieties from 

 their seed."^ 



The French Revolution drove a wealthy and educated Frenchman, M. 

 Parmentier, to New York at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He 

 planted about his place in Brooklyn a large garden in which there were 

 many grapes. This garden afterward became a commercial nursery from 

 which was distributed a considerable number of European grapes. Mr. 

 Robert Underbill at Croton Point on the Hudson was induced to plant a 

 vineyard of these but they soon went the way of all their kind, leaving 

 Mr. Underbill only a consuming desire to plant grapes. This desire bore 

 fruit, as we shall see. When the reign of terror had ceased, Parmentier 

 returned to France from whence he sent many grapes to friends in America. 



after a long controversy with horticulturists and botanists, fully established the fact that many 

 varieties of this fruit are infertile with themselves and that under cultivation infertile varieties must 

 have sorts planted near them capable of cross-pollinating them. Longworth took a deep interest 

 in horticulture generally and gathered about him a group of pioneer horticulturists who did much 

 for American fruit-growing in the middle of the nineteenth century, in many respects molding and 

 guiding the horticulture of that time in this country. Longworth wrote much for the contemporary 

 horticultural magazines and published two small books, " The Cultivation of the Grape and Manu- 

 facture of Wine" and " Character and Habits of the Strawberry Plant." He died in 1863, aged 80, 

 at Cincinnati, one of the most distinguished, enterprising and wealthy citizens of his State. For 

 further discussion of his life see Bailey's Evolution of Our Native Fruits: 61-65. 1898. 



'Probably the northern part of the vine region of France; the Jura mountains are in the east 

 central part. 



- Transactions New York State Agricultural Society, 6:689. 1846. 



