﻿92 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 59 



Nor do we find to-day any tendency among our people to confound 

 berries with fox-grapes in fact or in name. The mere difference 

 in size of fruit surely ought to be safeguard enough, to say nothing 

 of the really preposterous contrast between the plants in the same 

 regard. This grape is larger than most of the cultivated ones on 

 the market, whereas currants and cowberries are but little things. 

 The wild grape-vines will sometimes have a stem diameter of six 

 inches and often run to the upper boughs of tall trees or overspread 

 those of somewhat lesser growth with a dense canopy of verdure ; but 

 we all know what currant-bushes are, and the other suggested com- 

 petitors hardly equal their size. Would the old Norsemen have felt 

 any close analogy between a fruit as big as a pea, growing on a small 

 shrub and another as large as a pigeon's egg, hanging from a 

 conspicuous feature of the woodlands? Their descendants among 

 us do not seem to observe such matters differently from other people. 



Among Dr. Storm's notes there is one curious instance of a 

 Nova Scotian, who referred to certain grapes as " wine-berries. " 

 I take this to relate to our common tart squirrel-grape, about the 

 size of a Zante-currant and barely edible when quite ripe, though 

 chiefly useful for jelly, and presumably capable of yielding a berry- 

 wine or other dubious beverage. Dr. Storm's witnesses probably 

 establish the occasional occurrence of this little wild grape in Nova 

 Scotia a few years ago, if not now ; but no doubt Prof. Fernald is 

 right in holding that it cannot have been plentiful. Yet, however 

 abundant, it would be irrelevant. Not such were the bountiful 

 grapes which King Sweyn commended to Adam of Bremen, which 

 the sagas celebrated, and which Leif Ericsson first found. 



The larger wild grapes, it appears, are divided into several species 

 of varying habitat in New England, nowhere passing the Bay of 

 Fundy. Gomez * may have found them on the Penobscot about 1525, 

 as Champlain heard of them in 1605 on the St. John, where they 

 have been made into wine in recent years, 2 and reported them plentiful 

 near Saco. Lescarbot, 3 who was with him, corroborates this, declar- 

 ing that they grew as large as plums at Richmond Island; but he 

 relates a projected experiment of their apothecary to introduce grape 



1 S. E. Dawson: The St. Lawrence, its Basin, p. 102. 



2 Haliburton: A Search for Lost Colonies. Pop. Sci. Mo., vol. 26, p. 40. 



3 M. Lescarbot : Nova Francia. Erondelle's transl., pp. 93, 101. I have mis- 

 taken one of our small wild plums for such a grape, the tree and vine being 

 neighbors. 



