REPORT OP COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATION 39 



The Outlook for Grape Breeding. 



Twenty-five years of work at the Station at Geneva, involving a study of 

 thousands of seedlings, has resulted in the production of but six seedlings 

 worthy of naming. This would seem to be a discouragingly small percentage 

 as, indeed, it would be were it not for the mass of information which has been 

 gathered from these discarded seedlings. We cannot hope to make consist- 

 ant progress until we have established more clearly the fundamental laws 

 no easy task but one which is well started and whose successful conclusion 

 may be confidently expected. 



Perhaps it would not be wise to close this paper without a word of 

 encouragment to the amateur breeder. The private grower can not hope to 

 carry on this work to the extent and with the continuity that can be secured 

 at our Experiment Stations. On the other hand practically every variety 

 now under cultivation has been found or produced by the lover of grapes 

 working in a small way, frequently, as Rogers worked, with only a backyard 

 at his disposal for growing his seedlings. For the true grape lover the 

 pleasure of the work is its own reward but there is always the hope that a 

 fortunate combination of parents may produce varieties superior to those 

 now under cultivation. Each addition to our knowledge of varieties and of 

 breeding laws brings this end so much nearer. 



INTRODUCTION OF VITICULTURE INTO THE SCHOOLS. 



By A. W. MILLER, 

 Benicia High School, Benicia, Solano County, California. 



Read by Frank T. Swett. 



Before discussing viticulture as a subject of instruction in the schools 

 I wish to say a few words about the conditions that would tend to make it 

 a success or a failure. 



Like everything else of any value, its beginnings will be halting and 

 counted a failure. Suppose some school man introduces viticulture into a 

 high school in a grape-growing region. The farmer's boys themselves will 

 know more about grapes than their instructor and the average man "Would 

 sink with bubbling groan, uncoffined, unknelled and unknown." 



Yet the average high school work in language, literature, mathematics, 

 science, history, etc., is no better. We can only measure the high school's 

 inadequacy when it tries something in real life. Our schools may as well 

 undertake a few things that have a bearing on every day life and flounder 

 around until they succeed, instead of expending all their energies upon 

 academic lines. 



While the farmer would laugh at the meager results of the fellow trying 

 to teach agriculture, he does not realize that the school does not reach a 

 higher degree of efficiency in any other line. 



The community itself must make the school. The teacher can but inter- 

 pret the attitude and ideals of the community. That place in which the 



