VITIS BOUBQUINIANA 8<J 



Vitis cestivalis and the European wine -grape. It is 

 very likely that some of these varieties, perhaps even 

 the Herbemont itself, may have been brought from 

 Europe; but if full records had been made of the early 

 introductions of American plants into southern Europe 

 by the returning of the emigrant ships and by other 

 vessels, it is equally likely that we should find that 

 our native summer- grape had been sent to the Old 

 World. At all events, it is unassumable that a native 

 grape, distributed through the Mediterranean region, 

 could have escaped for centuries the critical search of 

 European botanists and the knowledge of hundreds of 

 generations of vignerons, to be discovered at last trans- 

 planted in the New World. This southern family of 

 wine- grapes is not further removed from Vitis cestivalis 

 than the Concord and some other common fox -grapes 

 are removed from Vitis Labrusca; and the botanical 

 features of the family seem to me to be distinctly those 

 of Vitis cestivalis. Mr. Munson has raised plants which 

 he considers to belong to his Vitis Bourquiniana from 

 seeds which he obtained from Spain; but the speci- 

 mens which I have seen of these plants seem to me 

 to be only forms of the European wine -grape, Vitis 

 vinifera* 



Still another native grape must have a conspicuous 

 place in this history. It is the Scuppernoug, a direct 

 offspring of the curious Muscadine grape ( Vitis rotun- 

 <1 i folia, Fig. 17), of the South. It is said that the 

 Scuppernong was discovered on Roanoke Island, North 

 Carolina, by Sir Walter Raleigh's colony, and that the 



The student of this southern type of crapes should consult the writings of 

 Engelmann and Munson. The best and most recent presentation of the char- 

 acteristics of the group by Munson is to be found in the "Texas Farm and 

 Ranch " for February 8, 1896. 



