76 HISTORY OF OHIO. 



All these vines, we cheerfully, and pressingly and warmly 

 introduce to our friends, N.Longworth, Esquire, of Cincinnati, 

 and to William Prince and sons, of the Linnsan garden, Long 

 Island. We wish also to introduce it to ail other lovers of a 

 vine, of modest merit, genuine and modest worth. Having 

 brought forward these vines, humble, as to pretension, show 

 and parade, which they avoid, like those of the human family, 

 who rely solely on their own intrinsic goodness and worth; we 

 now mention 



THE FROST GRAPE, 



Whose vine, in diameter, is from twelve to eighteen 

 inches, and whose topmost boughs often tower more than 

 one hundred feet on high, covering the tops of the largest 

 trees, along the Ohio river, and, all its tributaries. This 

 most stately vine, after climbing to so great a height; after all 

 its lofty pretension, show, effort and parade, produces a fruit 

 that is small, of a sourish-bitter taste, and is of little or no val- 

 ue. It resembles, in all respects, a cold, heartless politician, 

 who flatters, some foolish, weak man in power, to help him 

 up to the highest station, in a state, which the parasite merely 

 j^hades with his luxuriant foliage, without producing in return 

 for the favor, a single cluster of any value. But we dismiss 

 the whole grape family, with a few remarks. 



We have, in Ohio, not only one of the best regions for the grape 

 vine, but the very best grapes, now already, for wine or for rai- 

 sins, and these are natives of our own soil and climate. Lying 

 in the same parallels with those countries of Europe, where the 

 vine flourishes best, our soil is even superior to theirs, for our 

 own most delicious grapes. Having the fruit, the soil and the 

 climate best adapted to these grapes, all that is now needed, is 

 the disposition to cultivate our own vines! Every family in 

 this state, who own a few acres of land, might raise, annu- 

 ally, all the grapes which they need. Properly trimmed, and 

 taken care of, the vine never grows too old to bear fruit, and 

 there arc vines now in Italy, which are two thousand vears old. 

 Such a vine might be laid on a stone wall, on any sunny side 



