88 THE EVOLUTION OF OUR NATIVE FRUITS 



estimated at 58,000 acres. These are astounding figures, 

 when one considers that a century ago profitable grape- 

 culture was impossible in the country, and that many 

 men now living have seen the introduction of most of 

 the varieties of grapes which are successfully grown; 

 and all the varieties have been bred directly or indi- 

 rectly from the unpromising vines which grow wild 

 in our own fields and woods. 



Why Did the Early Vine Experiments Fail f 



The reader has no doubt been curious to know, 

 from the outset, why the early attempts to grow the 

 European grape had resulted in such disastrous fail- 

 ure; and now that we are approaching the end of our 

 narrative, I shall proceed at once to gratify his curi- 

 osity. The failure was the result of an obscure sick- 

 ness which caused the leaves to die and drop, and the 

 grapes to rot. There was just enough indefiniteness 

 and speculation about these diseases to make the early 

 grape literature attractive, but in these impertinent 

 days, when we have dragged the whole panorama of 

 nature across the slide of a microscope, we have done 

 away with the mystery, and speak of these diseases 

 familiarly as the downy mildew and black -rot, or, 

 to be exact, as Peronospora viticola and Lcestadia 

 Bidwellii. If these Latin epithets had been in- 

 vented in the days of Dufour and his contemporaries, 

 imagination would have been squelched, and all the 

 naive and delightful writing about the behavior of the 

 electric fluid, the strange influences of the different 

 soils, the vagaries of the seasons, the curious effects of 



