OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 59 



before. But therewith the whole natural power of the vines was fully exhausted; 

 nothin<)f, or too little, could be done for the shoots, the arid and iuipenetrable soil 

 refusiny to contribute any portion of alimentary substance. 



Wiiatare the younof shoots in the primary part of the season? A watery sub- 

 stance wiiii-li afiervvard must be consolidated and furnished with tiie necessary ino-re- 

 dients; and just that was not done. I have examined such last year's shoots early in 

 the s[»rin<r and found that their cambium amounted to nearly nothing. No wonder 

 that such vines made either a scanty and sickly growth, or none at all. 



(;5) Tlie remarkable circumstance, that on the same 'piece of ground some of the vines 

 are just as we could loish, and others either sickly or dead, inay thus be accounted for : 

 The one vine ma.y have suffered by too heany cropping, the other not; the one may have been 

 naturally more vigorous, the other more feeble ; here the subsoil may be more porous, there 

 it may have been fully dried out and hardened, like a threshing floor ; surely, neither the 

 root-iouse nor the winter frost had anything to do ivith this unexampled mortalily. The 

 best thing that could be done, anyhow, was to cut back the vines to a few buds, near 

 the ground, as soon as this morbid condition could be ascertained. 

 * -s * * * * * * * * -;fr * * 



From an interesting article in the Cleveland Herald^ by F. R. 

 Elliott, in which the author gives an account of the exceptional death 

 of many other deciduous and evergreen plants, and his belief that it 

 was owing mainly to want of moisture, I abstract those passages 

 which particularly refer to the Grape-vine: 



It is this same want of moisture food to the roots that has caused more or less of 

 Walter, Diana, lona, as well as other late growing varieties of grapes— (4) and espe- 

 cially of those having a large per centage of foreign blood in them, such as Diana. Ham- 

 burg, Weehawken, Kebecca, Croton, etc. — to die out since the incoming of spring; for 

 inan,y of tliem now dead were, on the first of March, apparently perfect ; as cuttings we 

 now have, made at that time, show, and are growing, while the vines from which they 

 were cut are dead. * * '•-" -is- * -k- * * 



Many vineyards of Catawba and Delaware are more than half destroyed, and even 

 many vines of Concords. Young vines, and those of strong grovjth and on sandy soils, 

 have come out best. 



Dr. S. J. Parker, of Ithaca, N. Y., after showing (Coventry Gentle- 

 man, June 29. 1S72) that nearly two-thirds of a,H kinds of grape-vines 

 were partially or entirely killed, (5), a7id that the Isabellas and Ca- 

 taiohas suffered most^ concludes with the following paragraphs: 



Yet this much should be said. In vinej%';rds trimmed early in the fall, and whose 

 canes lay on the ground, the loss is hardlj^ perceptible in a fevv instances. And it is not 

 easy to explain why a vineyard like Mr. Baker's has his fine Rogers in beautiful estate, 

 ard his Isabellas, etc., alsolargely escaped, while others, with similar care and earlier 

 attention, have suttered. 



This is no trifling evil, and its causes and consequences need to be commented on. 

 Let us first have the extent of this unusual damage and its peculiarities, and tlien, and 

 not until then, theory, and the lessons to be learned b.y it. That the remarkable dryness 

 is connected ivith it I am certain ; yet this can not be all. 



These extracts are from among many that might be given, but as 

 they come from well-known writers, and include all the rational the- 

 ories propounded, it is needless to quote farther. 



We see from the above that two principal causes are given to ac- 

 count for the result stated: 1st, Drouth; 2d, Overbearing. A third, 

 namely, winter-killing, has been often urged; but meteorological data 

 show that there was nothing unusually severe in the winter of 1S71-2, 

 at least in our section of the country, and the experience of Mr. E. A. 

 Riehl, as given at the August (1872) meeting of the Alton (Ills.) Hor- 

 ticultural Society, proves pretty conclusively that winter-killing 



