80 THE EVOLUTION OP OUR NATIVE FRUITS 



500,000 of the plants could have been obtained. Need 

 I name it? It is the Norton's Virginia. Truly, 'great 

 oaks from little acorns grow ! ' and I boldly prophecy 

 to-day that the time is not far distant when thousands 

 upon thousands of our hillsides will be covered with its 

 luxuriant foliage, and its purple juice become one of 

 the exports to Europe, provided, always, that we do not 

 grow so fond of it as to drink it all. I think that this 

 is preeminently a Missouri grape. Here it seems to 

 have found the soil in which it nourishes best. I have 

 seen it in Ohio, but it does not look there as if it was 

 the same grape. And why should it? They drove it 

 from them and discarded it in its youth; we fostered it, 

 and do you not think, dear reader, there sometimes is 

 gratitude in plants as well as men? Other states may 

 plant it and succeed with it, too, to a certain extent, 

 but it will cling with the truest devotion to those lo- 

 calities where it was cared for in its youth." 



In 1858, Husmann received from William Robert 

 Prince, the nurseryman of Flushing, Long Island, 

 another grape, the Cynthiana, which is so like the 

 Norton's Virginia as to be almost indistinguishable 

 from it. "This grape promises fair to become a dan- 

 gerous rival to Norton's Virginia," writes Husmann 

 in 1865. But the Norton was too firmly established 

 to be supplanted by the newcomer, although the two 

 varieties are usually mentioned together when one 

 speaks of wine making in the middle South. This 

 Cyuthiana is understood to have been picked up in the 

 wild in Arkansas. 



Now, what are these southern wine -grapes, Her- 

 bemont, Le Noir, Norton's Virginia, Cynthiana, and 

 all their kin? To what species do they belong? As 



