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pinching, drenching and training and various other mysteries 

 which are laid down so minutely as a guide for the amateur cul- 

 tivator, can succeed in producing specimens rivaling those 

 which we so often see exhibited in the book of paintings of fruits 

 which the vendor of nursery stock uses to allure the innocent 

 and unwary to invest in some newly brought out variety, and 

 who expect to do this, sad defeat and disaster will surely 

 overtake. Most of the books and writings on grape culture are 

 put out as advertisements and as allurements to the eager seek- 

 ers after something new to induce them to invest in the so called 

 new and superior varieties which are ever being brought into no- 

 tice and sold at high figures ; when the trial of them proves that 

 we have as good and even better kinds. And then the puny lit- 

 tle plant which we parted with a five dollar bill to obtain, is cast 

 aside for some of the tried and well know^i varieties which can 

 be bought for about twenty-five cents per plant. 



The grape when fully ripened is truly one of the most lus- 

 cious of fruits and as such will ever be sought by the public, and 

 it is a lamentable fact that our northern home is not the home of 

 the vine, where the mild rays of the summer sun love to linger 

 and the genial breezes of the tropics with the deep and warm 

 soils incident to the "sunny south." There is her home and 

 there will she give forth the rich harvests so delightful to man. 



If we do succeed here in raising a few of inferior quality it is 

 only by constant care and toilsome labor. A man would make 

 more money raising potatoes at fifty cents a bushel than grapes 

 at ten cents a pound which is about as much as one can obtain for 

 the first clusters we are able to get into market. Long before our 

 earliest ones are ripe, our markets are filled with grapes from 

 the South, and the people have had their fill, or at least the time 

 of high prices has passed and ours have to be sold at lower 

 rates. I have been trying to raise grapes for the past twenty 



