16 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 



on account of their difficulty of adapting themselves to new conditions, 

 refusal to grow from cuttings, or requiring such special soils, etc., that it 

 was not practically possible to use them. Hence the sixteen other species 

 of American vines will not now be considered at this time, reserving for 

 another place and time a full discussion, from a scientific standpoint, of 

 these species which have but little practical interest for us to-day. Let 

 the reader be assured that it will be idle for him to attempt to improve 

 on the Riparia and Rupestris, except by years of hybridizing, or repro- 

 duction by layering, which is far too long and expensive an operation, 

 except for public experiment stations or fancy vineyardists. A few of 

 the hybrids already made will, in their place, be discussed. 



Vitis Riparia and Vitis Rupestris. 



As soon as the fact was established that the Vitis Riparia and Vitis 

 Rupestris were more valuable than the rest of the eighteen species, the 

 European growers did exactly as is being done to-day in California. 

 They sent to the American forests and got any and everything that 

 could be called Riparia or Rupestris. Perhaps one of the most striking 

 mistakes they made was to attempt to reproduce the resistant stocks 

 from seeds. This proved a most dismal failure everywhere, for almost 

 every seedling developed into a new variety of more or less worthless- 

 ness, it being seldom that a grape seedling is as good as the mother- 

 vine. The well-meant advice of some "to go slow" was disregarded, 

 and they planted anything they could get. The result was that tens of 

 thousands of acres had to be dug up, after several years of waiting. 

 Then came the period of doubt, and the revival of the old question, 

 " Do resistants really resist?" 



In this State, similarly, many entertain serious doubts on this subject. 

 Mysterious diseases are reported that attack one man's vines and leave 

 his neighbors' intact. In some cases a man's Riparias are found to be 

 partly perishing, while others, bought from a different nursery, are doing 

 finely. All this was passed through by the European vine-growers 

 years ago, and it cost them roundly; but they persevered and -finally 

 triumphed over all obstacles, in spite of having far more difficulties to 

 contend with than their California brethren have. By visiting their 

 neighbors, and the government experiment stations, they profited by the 

 lessons each had learned under different conditions, and thus it came 

 about that even the laborers soon learned to become comparative experts 

 in American ampelography. 



There seems to be a deep-seated objection on the part of many Cali- 

 fornia growers to going into what they are pleased to call "useless 

 details." They want a hard-and-fast rule that will fit all cases, and 

 that will not require any study on their part. The moment it is sug- 

 gested that there are varieties of Riparia or Rupestris, they become 

 impatient and say " That's all well enough for the experts, but there is 

 not time for such details." Yet it became necessary that the most igno- 

 rant peasants abroad should familiarize themselves with these details 

 before the vineyards were sucessfully reconstituted; and they did so, 

 becoming most expert observers and invaluable aids to those more deeply 

 .versed in the science. Instead of relying on nurserymen to do the 

 selecting for them, they procured from those that had the best varieties 

 and propagated their own nursery stock, carefully rejecting all weak 



