40 



THE GRAPES OF NEW YORK. 



Virginia, visited Robert Beverly, the author of this work, in the year 171 5, 

 at his residence, near the head of the Mattapony. Here he cultivated 

 several varieties of the grape, native and French, in a vineyard of about 

 three acres, situated upon the side of a hill, from which he made in that 

 year four hundred gallons of wine. He went to very considerable expense 

 in this enterprise, having constructed vaults of a wine-cellar. But Fontaine 

 comparing his method with that used in Spain, deemed it erroneous, and 

 that his vineyard was not rightly managed. The home-made wine Fontaine 

 drank heartily of, and found it good, but he was satisfied by the flavor of 

 it that Beverly did not understand how to make it properly. * * * 

 He had laid a sort of wager with some of the neighboring planters, he 

 giving them one guinea in hand, and they promising to pay him each ten 

 guineas, if in seven years he should cultivate a vineyard that would yield at 

 one vintage seven hundred gallons of wine. Beverly thereupon paid them 

 down one hundred pounds, and Fontaine entertained no doubt but that in 

 the next year he would win the thousand guineas." And Beverly won 

 the guineas. 



Boiling in his Sketch of Vine Ctiltiirc, 1765, mentions native grapes 

 only as they indicate to him the adaptability of the country for the Euro- 

 pean sorts. Yet he suggests, and was probably the first to do so, the pos- 

 sibility of hybridization between American and the European species. He 

 says: " Would it not be well for us to attempt the raising of new varieties, 

 by marrying our native with foreign vines? " He then gives a plan whereby 

 the vines may be planted as to "so interlock their branches as that they 

 shall be completely blended together." He says, "they will then feed 

 from the blossoms of each other, and when the fruit is ripe, and if seeds 

 are saved from it and sown in nurseries, * * * it is probable 

 that we shall obtain other varieties better adapted to our climates and better 

 for wine and table, than either of those kinds from which they sprung. 

 Beyond these brief mentions Boiling does not discuss native grapes, 

 though he tells of the origin of the Bland grape, which we now know to be a 

 native, and wrongly says that it grew from the seed of a European raisin. 



Antill, in his Essay on the Cultivation of tlie Vine, a treatise discussed 

 in the previous chapter, gives no varieties of native grapes, though he says 

 that he had just entered upon a trial of them. His brief discussion of 



