1220 THE FRUIT INDUSTRY IN NEW YORK STATE 



Hampshire had his orchard and every tenth man his cider mill, 

 and every well-to-do farmer put into his cellar yearly from twenty 

 to fifty barrels of cider, which was all drunk on the premises. In 

 1805, there were 4,800 barrels of cider made in one town and every 

 drop of it was drunk there. In Connecticut, according to Hale, 

 every farmhouse cellar wintered from thirty to fifty barrels of 

 cider. I should say to my reader that these practices are not evi- 

 dences of desire for strong drink, but this was considered to be 

 the proper and best way in which to consume the fruit ; the grape 

 was even more prized for its juice, and one of the earliest writers 

 on this fruit in North America declares that he undertook the 

 cultivation of it " for th&good of my country and from a principle 

 of love to mankind," considering wine to be a good corrective 

 against the " great excesses in the use of distilled spirituous 

 liquors " on the part of the people of America, " which ruin their 

 constitutions, and soon render them unfit for the service of God and 

 their country, as well as for that of their own family and friends/' 

 I have said this much about the use of the juices in order that 

 my reader may understand the point in view in the early attempts 

 to grow the vine in this country of promise. 



THE GRAPE A FACTOR IN MAN ? S DEVELOPMENT 



The grape of history is the wine grape. Like the dog, the ox, 

 the sheep, the grains for bread, the olive, and the apple, it has been 

 one of the accompaniments of man from the depths of the imme- 

 morial past. It has modified his course and identified him with 

 the products of the earth. In this long companionship, the de- 

 tails and the course of which no man knows, the vine has become 

 modified into many forhis, yielding its gracious products under 

 many suns and in great diversity of difficult conditions. The dim 

 memories of unknown generations were associations with wine, the 

 product of the vine. 



The Old World civilization was transferred to the New World, 

 and the vine came with it, as came also cattle (albeit the native 

 bison was here, but he has been exterminated), horses, fowls, rye, 

 barley, and wheat. But, whereas these other good products adapted 

 themselves readily to the new country, the grape did not do so ; and 

 in the full process of time another grape took the place of the old, 



