DIANA AND CATAWBA. 115 



say pretty nearly what they are going to be ; — not quite, 

 because, as they grow older, the quality, etc., improves. If it 

 is good at first, you may be sure it will be better afterwards. 

 But among them you will find a great many which will revert 

 back to the wild stock from which they sprung. Some of them 

 will be wilder than anything you ever saw before, in the first 

 generation. I had some of the Plymouth County white grape 

 sent to me — beautiful to look upon, and very good to eat ; and 

 I expected confidently to get from them a lax'ge, fine and 

 improved white grape. I obtained two hundred seedlings ; 

 I had fifty fruitful ones, and not one of them was white. They 

 were black, mostly ; two or three were red or brown. Some of 

 them were sweet, but not a sufficient advance to prompt me to 

 go on with that experiment, because I had already got beyond 

 the second generation with the family I was experimenting 

 upon. 



Let me say another word about famous grapes. There is not 

 to my knowledge, in this country (though hundreds have been 

 raised,) a seedling from the Isabella equal to the parent. It is 

 not, in other words, a good breeder. That has been true, until 

 recently, if it is not true now (I believe it to be true now,) of 

 the Catawba. Though it has given seedlings bearing larger 

 berries, it has never yet given a grape equal to itself for the 

 table or wine, unless the seedling which Mr. Poesel the German 

 wine-maker at the West, has on trial should prove to be a better 

 grape than the Catawba. 



Mr. Hyde. The Diana is from the Catawba. 



Mr. Bull. It is ; but the great majority do not consider it 

 equal to the Catawba to-day. I like it ; it has a peculiar flavor, 

 most agreeable to me ; but I never saw a Diana equal to the 

 Catawbas we had on the dinner-table to-day. 



Now the Catawba is better in some localities than others ; and 

 so, also, the Diana. It is claimed for the Diana that at the 

 South it is superior to the Catawba. I can well imagine that to 

 be true, because soil and climate have great effect upon the 

 quality of the grape. I have seen Isabella grapes grown in one 

 location so sour you could not eat them ; and I have seen 

 Isabella grapes grown in another location — in Boston, on the 

 side of a house — that were exquisite. Location, season, soil, 

 vigor of vine, mode of pruning — all those go into the quality of 



