84 SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT 



tension to be medicinal. There are seventy-tliree acres in grapes, chiefly Concord, 

 Catawba, Clinton, Ives. N'ortons and Di^lavvares. The work is done under different 

 squads of men, every tiiino: systematically and at the proper time ; there is no slash- 

 inof, breaking, or even pinching done dnriiig- time of growth ; the pruning is done soon 

 after the crop is gatliered ; the plowing and cultivation is thorough, but ol' a light char- 

 acter; the soil is always loose and no weeds are suffered; and, in anticipation of rail- 

 dew, the vines are regularly sulphured by yneans of De Lavorg'ue'' s bellows. No wonder 

 that with tills systematic care and treatment the vines are full of vigor and of fruit, 

 notwithstanding the trying weather and other miseries which vines have had to en- 

 counter for the past few years. As a vineyard it is a success ; a very limited loss of 

 vines and a great production of fruit, the Concord for a red wine, and the Catawba for 

 white wine predominating, they being without a doubt our preferred national wines. 



" Uncle Davy," of Buck's Hill, Ky., whose experience Mr. Samuel Miller, of Bluff- 

 ton, vouches for, and who refers the failure he mentions to rot, writes {ibid Nov. 2, 

 1873) : 



^* '"^ " I have visited nearly ever}' vineyard worth seeing in south- 

 west Missouri and northwest Arkansas ; have been in correspondence with many of 

 the owners, and have yet to see the first European hj'brid or Fox Grape (Ives and Ve- 

 nango excepted) that would produce more than two good crops, or more than four 

 that wouki pay for cultivation, etc. * * * 'fhe reports of the press aregeu- 

 erally very good, but so was mine the first year, and so will be that of nearly every 

 new beginner. The failures we do not like to report — and yet they are much more 

 useful to study than success. 



Mr. Miller himself writes {ibid, Feb. 28, 1874) : 



* «- « [ iiad near one hundred varieties in the East, among them, of 

 course, Catawba and Isabella; yet I never raised a perfect bunch of the former on trel- 

 lis, but did so wiien a vine ran upon a small apple tree. Isabellas are always a failure 

 on my prepared land — lower drained and trenched two feet deep — but when a branch 

 of a vine planted not far from a cherry tree took hold and was allowed to run on it, 

 the fruit was always tine. Also a Uarrigues, a variety of Isabella, fails on a trellis, but 

 where it has t iken on a Bowman's May cherry tree, it has large crops of splendid fruit. 

 One year when the grape crop was almost a universal fiillure, I visited a friend in 

 York county. Pa., who had extensive vineyards, but no good fruit except a vine that 

 ran on an ailanthus tree. Another season, when the grape crop in that section was 

 nearly a faihu'e, a friend sent me a basket of Catawbas, such as I had seldom seen or 

 eaten, and so good and handsome, with the accompanying note: " These I gathered 

 this morn ing from a Mazzard cherry tree, sixty feet from the ground." 



Which is the most likely — that the tree benefited the vine, or that the greater 

 length and depth of root, corresponding with the greater length of arm, enabled the 

 vine to resist its hemipterous and subterranean enemy? 



Of similar significance is the experience of a correspondent of the Department of 

 Agriculture, who has had exceptional success with a vineyard, on the Potomac, some 

 three miles above Washington, and who closes a communication in these words : 



I am annually enlarging my vineyard, which now comprises about six acres ; ex- 

 pect to enlarge it to ten next fall. The soil and sub-soil prove to be perfectly adapted 

 to the growth of the grape, being composed of about equal parts of sand, loam and 

 clay, and containing considerable quantities of mica, with a sub-soil of rotten rock, 

 into which the grape roots penetrate several feet. It is also just porous enough to 

 absorb the rains ; consequently no draining is required. 



The columns of our horticultural press abound in facts like the above, which, 

 viewed from the Phylloxera stand-point, have a deep meaning ; and I entirely agree 

 with Mr. Husmann when, in recentlj' demurring, in his own convincing way, from the 

 idea that trees in themselves benefit a vine, he remarks, {Rural World, March 21, 1874) : 

 "To sum up our wants, I think we want longer fall pruning, early and judicious sum- 

 mer pruning, more room for our vines, and, last but not least, more thinking and ob- 

 serving vintners, who know what they are doing and why they do it." 



(23) I have already shown (Rep. .3, pp. G8-9, note) how unreliable, as an observer, 

 is M. L. Laliman, of Bordeaux, France, who is prominent among those who advocate 



