THE GRAPES OF NEW YORK. 233 



he saw fruit of this variety which had been brought into town from one of 

 the neighboring farms. An investigation disclosed that the variety was 

 being raised on the farms of a Mr. Warford and of a Mr. Heath, near the 

 banks of the Scioto River, a few miles from the town of Delaware, and 

 that Warford had brought the variety from the State of New Jersey more 

 than twenty years before. It was known in this neighborhood under 

 the name of Heath, or Powell. Thompson sent fruit of the variety to 

 A. J. Downing who gave it the name Delaware, after the town from which 

 the samples had been sent. Thompson also brought it to the notice of the 

 Ohio Pomological Society in the autumn of 185 1. It was found that the 

 Delaware vines secured by Warford could be traced back to the garden of 

 Paul H. Provost, a Swiss of Frenchtown, Kingswood Township, Hunterdon 

 County, New Jersey. Provost, at this time, was dead, and definite informa- 

 tion was very difficult to secure as to where he had obtained his vines. 

 One account was that they had been received from a brother residing in 

 Italy, and in deference to this story, the variety was locally known as the 

 Italian wine grape. Another story was to the effect that they had been 

 brought to Provost's place by a German who had been in this country only 

 a short time but who had spent this interval with Hare Powell of Phila- 

 delphia. Whether the German secured the vines from the Old Country 

 or from Powell is uncertain. There was a report that they had been 

 secured from Powell and that he in turn had received them from Bland of 

 Virginia. All of the stories as to how the vines came into Provost's garden 

 lack supporting evidence and some were of the opinion that it had grown 

 in the garden as a seedling. 



The Delaware at once attracted great attention and the horticultural 

 journals were full of conflicting accounts of its history and of warm dis- 

 cussions as to its botany. In 1856 it was placed on the grape list of the 

 American Pomological Society fruit catalog as "a new variety which prom- 

 ises well;" two years later it was placed on the list of recommended sorts. 



There is still a difference of opinion as to the botany of this variety. 

 The theory advanced by many when it was first introduced, that it is a 

 pure Vinifera, has been abandoned. Millardet and others considered the 

 Delaware a hybrid between Vinifera, Labrusca, Cinerea and Aestivalis. 

 Munson holds that it is of Labrusca-Bourquiniana origin with a probable 



