36 THE GRAPES OF NEW YORK. 



The references given are sufficient to show that the value of the native 

 grapes as a source of food and for wine was recognized by the first settlers 

 in practically all of the colonies and that their possibilities as cultivated 

 plants were considered by some of the colonizers. Yet for two hundred 

 years there were no zealous efEorts made to cultivate American grapes. 

 Indeed, there are far fewer references to the wild grapes of the country in 

 the eighteenth century than in the seventeenth. The reasons for this 

 neglect of a plant which could so easily have been improved by cultiva- 

 tion, and this must have been apparent, are several. During all of 

 this period the European grape was being tried and all hopes for 

 viticulture were centered about it. Again, fruit of any kind was not a 

 common article of diet with Americans until even so recently as a genera- 

 tion ago, and native grapes are dessert fruits, not wine fruits, and wine 

 was the purpose for which all grapes were grown until the Catawba, the 

 Concord and the Delaware whetted the appetites of fruit eaters for a 

 dessert grape. 



In the history of the amelioration of the American grapes we can skip the 

 period from the early settlement of the country, a period represented by the 

 above quotations, to the first years of the United States as a lapse of time 

 in which there were no steps forward and in which even information con- 

 cerning grapes was scarcely increased. The evolution of American grapes 

 began with the opening of the nineteenth century, about the only accounts 

 of grapes during the eighteenth century worthy of note being those of John 

 Lawson, 1714; Robert Beverly, 1722; Col. Robert Boiling, 1765; Edward 

 Antill, 1769; and Peter Legaux, 1800. All of these writers excepting Law- 

 son were concerned with European grapes, and their relations to grape- 

 growing were therefore discussed in the chapter on the Old World grape. 

 It reinains, however, to call attention to such statements as were made by 

 them of American grapes. 



John Lawson, a Scotch engineer, spent eight years, beginning in 1700, 

 exploring and surveying North Carolina. A part of this time he was Sur- 

 veyor General for the State and through natural desire and vocation he 

 became familiar with the flora of North Carolina. In his history of that 

 State, written in 1714, he gives an account of its natural resources in which 

 the grapes of the region are several times described. He distinguishes six 



