THE GRAPES OF NEW YORK. 27 



by the hand of man. Probably they have been growing in the regions 

 where they are now found since before the migration of the first savages. 

 The agents of distribution have been natural ones, such as animals, birds, 

 and lake and river currents. These have widened the area of a species to 

 limits imposed by the hostile action of other plants and of animals and by 

 geographical and physical conditions. As a species has encroached upon a 

 new region, climate, soil, all of the conditions of environment, and the con- 

 test with other living things, have gradually modified its characters until in 

 time it became so changed that it constituted a new species. 



This descent from an original species with plants changed by environ- 

 ment has given us, in America, types of the wild grape as widely diverse as 

 the regions they inhabit. The species found in the forests have developed 

 long slender trunks and branches in their struggle to attain sunlight and 

 air. At least two species are dwarf and shrubby, or infrequently climbing, 

 two to six feet high, growing in dry sands, on rocky hills and mountains 

 where roots must cling to rocks and penetrate into interstices. Still another 

 form runs on the ground and over low bushes and is nearly evergreen, 

 but in the herbarium can hardly be distinguished from a grape whose habit 

 of growth is strikingly different. Some are long-lived, growing and bearing 

 fruit for two or more centuries, while others reach no greater age than the 

 ordinary shrub. Some have enormous stems, a foot or more in diameter, 

 gnarled and picturesque and supporting a great canopy of branch and 

 foliage,' while others are slender in stem and graceful, almost delicate, in 

 character of vine. Not less remarkable than the differences in structure is 

 the adaptability of the genus and some of the species to varied climatic 

 conditions. Several of the wild grapes develop full size and display natural 

 luxuriance and fruit-bearing qualities only in the Middle States, but may 



' There is a wild grape vine (probably Vitis aestivalis) near Daphne, Alabama, on the shores of 

 Mobile Bay, known as the " General Jackson vine " because of General Jackson having camped under 

 it during the war with the Seminole Indians in 1817-18, which for age and size is truly remarkable. 

 Mr. E. Q. Norton of Daphne writes of this vine as follows: " There is little known regarding the 

 Jackson grape vine beyond the fact that the oldest man living here when I came here — 20 years 

 ago — told me that the Indians told him when he came here as a boy — 90 years ago — that the 

 vine was at that time an old one, which had been growing longer than any of them could remember. 

 It was 27 inches through the trunk, four feet above the ground, when I measured it ten years since, 

 and the vines were running over the surrounding trees for many rods. The grapes were very small, 

 quite hard and not very juicy." 



