180 AMERICAN GRAPE GROWING 



CHAPTER XL. 



GRAPE CULTURE IN MISSOURI 



BY THE HON. PR. MUENCH. 



(Extract from a Letter written for the Am. Wine and Grape Grower.) 



"1. I must wonder, that still the Herbemont, Lenoir, 

 Devereux, Elsinburg, Eumelan, Norton, Cynthiana, Cun- 

 ningham, Hermann, Louisiana, Humboldt, Neosho, etc., 

 are thrown together as belonging to the mstivalis class. 

 In truth, there is as much essential difference between 

 some of those vines as between the Clinton and Concords. 

 A certain class of vines to which the Herbemont, Lenoir, 

 Cunningham, Devereux, Rulander, Louisiana, and their 

 seedlings, and probably the Delaware belong, and which 

 are by some named southern cestivalis, are in my ' School 

 for American Grape Culture' designated as ' vimfera- 

 like ' for the following reasons : Some of them (as the 

 Louisiana and Rulander) are ostensibly or undoubtedly 

 of European origin others may be descended from the 

 seeds of imported vines (as the Delaware) found grow- 

 ing wild in the woods near the place where once Joseph 

 Bonaparte lived, and most similar to the well-known 

 Traminer which he had tried to cultivate on his villa ; 

 others may first have been planted by the Huguenots 

 in South Carolina and elsewhere, and disseminated by 

 birds ; at any rate, these vines, materially differing from 

 all our indigenous varieties, are so nearly related to the 

 Vitis vmifera, that, for instance, visiting the vineyards 

 near Zurich, in Switzerland (in 1859), I could hardly dis- 

 tinguish the vines growing there from our own Herbe- 

 mont. Thus we have here a quite peculiar class of vines 

 not to be amalgamated with, the true cestivalis or any 

 other grape family. 



