SECRETARY'S REPORT. 85 



CULTIVATION OF THE GRAPE IN MASSACHUSETTS. 



Mr. T)ULL, ffom the Committee on Grape Culture, submitted 

 the following Report : — 



The soil and climate of Massachusetts have not been sup- 

 posed to be suited to the cultivation of the grape, and while 

 we confined our cultivation to the foreign grape, the experience 

 of grape-growers seemed to confirm this belief. The severity 

 of our winters ; the short summers, followed by early autumnal 

 frosts, checking the growth and preventing the ripening of the 

 immature wood ; the great vicissitudes of temperature breeding 

 mildew and disease, and the necessity of laying down and cov- 

 ering the vines to protect tlyem from the severe frosts of winter ; 

 made the cultivation too troublesome and costly for most people 

 to encounter. 



Now and then a favorable autumn would ripen the wood and 

 perfect the buds, so that a crop would be gathered in the 

 succeeding year, but this was the exception to the rule, and 

 occurred just often enough to encourage the grower to continue 

 his efforts, but not to make them profitable, or even, on the 

 whole, successful. 



Many growers, wearied with their ill success, gave up the 

 culture of the grape entirely. Some few still grew it against 

 the house, but even this protection failed, in the severe winters 

 of 1857, '58, and '59, in many instances, to save even the 

 Isabella from destruction, vines twenty years old having been 

 killed to the ground at that time. 



Notwithstanding these discouragements, however, the culti- 

 vation of the grape has increased in Massachusetts, and since 

 the seedlings of our native grape have been substituted for the 

 foreign, cultivators have met with a gratifying success. 



Of this stock we now have grapes which are hardy and pro- 

 lific, handsome and good, proof against that neglect whicli is 

 so natural a feature in the farming of a country comparatively 

 new, in which care implies cost more than in older and more 

 populous countries ; grapes which can be sold in the market at 

 a price which will remunerate the grower better, perhaps, than 

 any other crop he can raise. 



No word in the language has so uncertain a meaning as the 

 term hardy, as applied to grapes. Many persons consider all 



