232 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



on, as we turned down a road past a vineyard, "the 

 vines mostly grown in California are the real grape 

 of history, coeval with Noah. The eastern Con- 

 cords, Delawares, Niagaras and all those sorts that 

 pop from their skins, are comparatively recent de- 

 velopments of native American species found in the 

 woodlands of the Atlantic seaboard. The Old 

 World stock, the Vitis vinifera of botanists, is very 

 different, nor will it stand the same degree of frost 

 as the American varieties. The California climate, 

 however, suits it perfectly, and the old Padres 

 quickly established it here. The variety they 

 planted is still cultivated in California and is called 

 the Mission grape, though there are now a score of 

 other European sorts besides. It bears, at its best, 

 enormous bunches, a couple of feet long, which re- 

 mind one of the famous cluster which the Israelitish 

 spies of Moses cut in the Valley of Eshcol and two 

 men bore between them on a staff. They were prac- 

 tically the same sort as our Mission kind at any 

 rate some variety of Vitis vinifera, which is the 

 grape of Palestine. 



"There is something very fascinating to me 

 about a California vineyard, even now when the 

 vines are cut back, as the annual custom is, to 

 within a foot or two of the ground, so that there 

 is nothing but a checker board of black stumps, 



