APPENDIX I. 



31Y 



about the same qnantity of charcoal dust, from an old coal pit, was 

 Bpaded into each place designated for the reception of a vine. 



" I then procured of Elwanger and Barry, good strong two year old 

 vines, with which I planted one half of this ground ; and the other half I 

 planted with layers of the previous year's growth, without a particle of 

 top to any of them — each consisting simply of a short section of a vine 

 of the previous year's growth, with one bud and a few small roots 

 attached to it. 



'• These vines have had no other manuring since they were thus planted, 

 excepting about two bushels of leached ashes forked in around each vine 

 last season, and about one quart of plaster applied to each the season 

 before. They are trained on trellises running from north to south, eight 

 feet high, made of chestnut posts (for want of cedar), five inches square 

 at the bottom, and two and a half by five inches at the top, set eight and 

 a quarter feet apart, with strips of one and a half inch stuff, two and a 

 half inches wide, nailed from post to post, eighteen inches above the 

 ground, and at the top of the posts. Between these, three tiers of No. 

 14 iron wire are drawn, dividing the space equally between the wooden 

 strips, and secured to each post. 



" These trellises are now completely filled with good, strong, bearing 

 wood ready for use next season, much of which is over three quarters of 

 an inch in diameter, and large portions of it are now apparently ripe. I 

 allowed these vines to bear only about seven pounds each, last season ; 

 though they were set for full three times that quantity. I rubbed off 

 every alternate bud on all the vines last season; and after they were 

 set for fruit, I took off half of it. My fruit was mainly sold to dealers in 

 Elmira, and retailed by them at fourteen cents per pound, by the side of 

 Isabella grapes, cultivated near Penn Yan, at twelve and a half cents. 

 One dealer, Mr. H. H. Richards, afterward informed me that he sold 

 fifty-three pounds of my grapes in one evening at fourteen cents, and 

 but three pounds of the shilling grapes. Do you suppose those dead car- 

 casses had anything to do with this ? I do. 



" Last spring, before these vines commenced their growth, I measured 

 some twenty-five or thirty of them, taking them 'as they run,' and I 

 found but very few of them to measure only ten inches in circumference. 

 Nearly all measured over a foot around the body, several of them fifteen 

 inches, and one seventeen inches. But why did not those dead cattle and 

 leather shavings kill them? Surely it is a marvel that they did not ; for I 

 ^ have repeatedly dug down to the bones within the past two years, and 

 have always found them completely surrounded with a net-work of living 

 fibrous grape roots — not dead ones ! I am allowing these vines to bear 

 this season just half of what they set for, after a severe autumnal prun- 

 ing ; and I estimate the present crop at 3,200 pounds, or 20 pounds to tho 



13* 



