192 



THE GRAPES OF NEW YORK. 



to various soils, and, for a hybrid, ability to withstand fungi. It is thus 

 seen that the infusion of foreign blood has given the fruit of Brighton 

 some of the excellencies of Vitis vinifera while the preponderance of Vitis 

 labriisca blood has preserved the vigor and hardiness of the native species. 

 Brighton has two serious defects which no doubt have kept it from taking 

 higher rank as a commercial variety: It deteriorates in quality very quickly 

 after maturity so that it cannot be kept for more than a few days at its 

 best, hence cannot be well shipped to distant markets; and it is self- sterile to 

 a more marked degree than any other of our commonly grown grapes. To 

 have it at its best the fruit should be thinned. 



This grape is a signal example of a variety resulting from careful 

 and skilful work in grape-breeding. Its originator, Jacob Moore,' possessed 

 of a high degree of intelligence and an unusually keen sense of the latent 

 possibilities in plants, with unwearied perseverance spent years in the 

 attempt to produce grapes combining the good characters of the Old and 

 the New World grapes. As a result of his zeal and patience we have Brighton 

 and Diamond, the most valuable grapes of their class. Jacob Moore's 

 demonstration of the value of the secondary hybrid, and these two grapes, 

 must serve to commemorate a life spent in self denial, imposed poverty and 

 comparative obscurity that horticulture might be enriched. 



Brighton is a seedling of Diana Hamburg pollinated by Concord, 

 raised by the late Jacob Moore at Brighton, New York. The original 

 vine fruited for the first time in 1870 and fruit was first exhibited at the 

 meeting of the New York Horticultural Society in 1872. 



• Jacob Moore was born in Brighton. New York, in 1835. He early engaged in the nursery 

 business and about i860 began to experiment in hybridizing grapes, his first production of note being 

 Diana Hamburg which proved too tender to be of value in New York. In 1873 he sold the 

 Brighton to its introducer, the grape having come from a union of Diana Hamburg and Concord. 

 In 1882 Moore's third grape of note, the Diamond, was introduced, its parents being Concord, fertil- 

 ized by lona. One other grape completes his list of varieties of this fruit — the Geneva, a Vinifera- 

 Labrusca hybrid from seed planted in the spring of 1874. Beside these grapes, Moore was the orig- 

 inator of the Ruby. Red Cross and Diploma currants and the Bar-seckel pear. Jacob Moore died 

 in January, 1908. having devoted a life to the improvement of fruits and having spent a patrimony 

 of no small amount and all of his earnings in carrying on experiments in horticulture. It saddens 

 one to know that after having devoted a half century to the enrichment of agriculture, poor Moore 

 should have passed his last years in comparative poverty, and that chey were embittered with the 

 thought that, unlike the inventor, the producer of new fruits can in no way protect the products of 

 his originality, even though they added millions to the wealth of the country as have his fruits. 



