AGlilCULTURE. 195 



ripe, with a grayish dust, which brushes off, leaving a glossy, 

 smooth skin ; is about half an inch in diameter at its largest 

 size ; has a thin, sweet juice, with more meat and a little fruiti- 

 ness of a flavor. 



The Sonoma grape makes a light wine, resembling claret ; 

 the Los Angeles grape makes a strong wine, resembling port 

 and sherry. The two grapes are classed together as the " Mis- 

 sion," " jS'ative," or " Cahfornian" grapes, and were the only 

 varieties cultivated here previous to 1853. In that year the 

 importation of foreign grapes commenced, and now about two 

 hundred varieties are cultivated. The Mission grapes are 

 hardy, healthy, long-lived, productive, and early in coming into 

 bearing ; but they are surpassed in flavor, hardiness, produc- 

 tiveness, earliness of ripening, and earliness of bearing, by 

 many foreign varieties, Avhich, so far as is known, are not infe- 

 rior in any respect. The latter have been tried, however, only 

 three or four years, and therefore we cannot speak positively 

 whether they will prove so long-lived, or whether they will be 

 equal in some other points to the Mission grapes. 



Still, the superiority of the foreign grapes is so great, that 

 no reasonable man, acquainted with the subject, doubts that 

 they will drive the Mission grapes out of the market. Flavor 

 is a matter of vast importance in fresh fruit, and the want of it 

 is the great defect of the Mission grape, which will not com- 

 mand more than six or eight cents per pound in the San Fran- 

 cisco market, at the very time that fine foreign varieties bring 

 twenty-five and thirty-seven cents. Cuttings of the Mission 

 grapes can now be had for ten dollars per thousand, a price 

 that will not more than pay for prej^aring them for market ; 

 while those of the foreign cost from forty to one hundred and 

 fifty dollars per thousand. For wine, the foreign grape has an 

 equal or still greater advantage. Flavor and fruitiness are no\ 

 less needed there than in fruit to be eaten fresh at the table. 

 The lack of fruitiness is the great misfortune of the wine made 

 from the Colifornian grape, and the evil can only be remedied 

 by the use of the foreign grape. 



