THE HERBEMONT TYPE 81 



usual, opinions are divided. Practically all authors 

 are agreed that the Norton's Virginia and Cynthiana 

 tribe is a direct offshoot of the wild summer -grape 

 ( Vitis cestivalis, Fig. 16) of the Middle states and the 

 South. The Herbemont and Le Noir have been held 

 by most writers to have been descended from the same 

 wild species, but our contemporaneous student of the 

 genus, T. V. Munson, derives them from an unrecog- 

 nized and undescribed European species. "The Her- 

 bemont as 'Brown French,' and Le Noir or Jacques 

 as 'Blue French,' he has traced," writes Munson of 

 his own studies, "back through the Bourquin family 

 of Savannah, Georgia, to their bringing to Georgia 

 in its early settlement over 150 years ago from South 

 France. ****** j n nonor o f Gugie Bour- 

 quin, who so well assisted me to trace out the origin, 

 in this country, of Herbemont and Le Noir, I named 

 the group as a new species, Vitis Bourquiniana." With 

 all the uncertainties and gaps in the records and tra- 

 ditions of events pertaining to the cultivation of plants, 

 and with the constant intervention of seedlings and 

 new varieties, great dependence cannot be placed upon 

 the historical genealogy of the grape. The difficulty 

 is all the greater because the species of grapes are 

 themselves so variable and so like one another, that 

 errors can occur in the records almost before one's 

 eyes. The student must rely more upon the botanical 

 features of the plants than upon the histories of them. 

 For myself, while admitting that my facilities for the 

 study of the question have been less than those of 

 Munson, I am convinced that this Herbemont tribe is 

 an ameliorated form of the native summer- grape, Vitis 

 cestivalis. Some of the varieties may be hybrids of 



