56 THE EVOLUTION OP OUR NATIVE FRUITS 



As late as 1821, Dr. Solomon Beach, of southern 

 Ohio, found these grapes still growing wild at Mur- 

 ray sville. The country abounded in grapes, but Mrs. 

 Murray pointed out one vine of great excellence, 

 which grew over a small oak tree in sight from the 

 door. This particular vine bore profusely a fruit of 

 "a reddish color, with a purple, dusky appearance; 

 the taste sweet and pleasant, with a peculiar, agree- 

 able flavor." This vine is evidently the one from 

 which the variety was propagated. The region in 

 which this grape was found is on the summit of the 

 Black Ridge, in a thinly timbered region with poor 

 and loose, gravelly soil. 



The conditions of the finding of the Catawba 

 seem to leave no doubt, therefore, that the variety 

 is a pure native, uncontaminated by hybrid! ty with 

 European varieties. It is, of course, conceivable that 

 a bird may have dropped a seed which it got in a 

 garden, but the presumption is against it. Dufour 

 was so loth to believe that native grapes could have 

 merit for the cultivator that he was inclined to explain 

 the origin of promising varieties in the wild by sup- 

 posing that birds .had taken the seeds there. "A 

 blackbird or a wood -picker, eating a berry of the 

 Sweetwater, in a garden at New York, or one of the 

 Cape grapes at Spring -mill, may travel," he writes, 

 "hundreds of miles before he sows the seed of it; and 

 we may naturally foresee, that the number of wild 

 grapes having some similarity to the European sorts, 

 must increase gradually." But all the records agree 

 in saying that there were several or even many sorts 

 of wild grapes growing in the vicinity of Murraysville, 

 and a number of them were of good quality. It 



