ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED FRUITS 277 



are grown, all descended from a single species, Vitis vinifera, 

 supposed to be indigenous to Asia. 



Curiously enough, these European cultivated varieties failed 

 utterly to grow in the eastern United States, 1 and our early fore- 

 fathers suffered much extremity, or thought they did, by their 

 inability to grow the European grape for wine, some good chron- 

 iclers going so far as to express a doubt if the Creator had ever 

 intended such a country for human habitation. 



Failing 2 in the attempts to grow the European grapes, the 

 settlers naturally turned their attention to the native species that 

 clambered everywhere and that early attracted attention. Thus 

 Captain John Smith, for example, in the quaint language of the 

 times (1607- 1 609) writes of the wild grapes of Virginia that they 

 " climbe the toppes of the highest trees" ; and speaking of the 

 fruit, he says, " They bee fatte and the iuyce thicke : neither 

 doth the tast so well please when they are made in wine." 3 From 

 which we see that the attention of the time was mainly upon wine. 



"America is the land of the grape," says Bailey, 4 who lists no 

 less than twenty-two distinct species and thirteen varieties of 

 grape native to the United States. The principal species are the 

 following, which, directly or through their hybrids with the Old 

 World wine grape, V. vinifera, have given rise to our common 

 American cultivated varieties, distinguished by their round, juicy, 

 many-seeded fruits as distinct from the fleshy European (now 

 California) species : 



1 . Vitis rotundifolia, the muscadine or Southern fox grape. 5 

 Delaware to Florida and west to Kansas and Texas, and parent 

 of the large musky Scuppernong. 



1 This was due, as we now know, to certain diseases that killed the leaves, 

 probably the downy mildew and black rot. These grapes have been since grown 

 out of doors in California for raisins, wine, and for shipping, and they appear 

 on our markets now as the thick-meated " California grapes." 



2 The story of this failure is finely told by Bailey in his " The Evolution of 

 our Native Fruits." 



3 " Evolution of our Native Fruits," p. 4. 



4 Ibid., pp. 98-117. 



5 Called by Gray, Vitis vulpina. 



