INTRODUCTORY. 13 



every season, although the grape itself may appear to be 

 perfect. I mention this, that those who fail to grow good 

 healthy seedlings on the first trial may not be discouraged. 

 The next season, with no greater care, they may have per- 

 fect success. It must not be expected that all the seed- 

 lings, nor any great portion of them, will produce better 

 fruit than the parent, for although the vine has a tendency 

 to improve upon its wild nature a return, as it were, foi 

 the care and labor bestowed upon it yet after it has taken 

 a few steps toward civilization, a large portion of its off- 

 spring show a disposition to recede to their original state. 

 In growing a thousand seedlings from a choice improved 

 variety, if we succeed in getting one even but little better 

 than the parent, we would be well repaid. 



It is this very uncertainty that affords the pleasure and 

 the rarity of satisfactory results which gives value to this 

 department of grape culture. Seedling grapes are from 

 three to ten years in coming into bearing usually the 

 wildest and the most inferior varieties will grow the 

 strongest, and come into bearing first. In 1862 I marked 

 several two-year-old seedlings that showed strong indi- 

 cations of their wild character, for the purpose of ascer- 

 taining how near one could judge of the worthlessness of 

 a seedling by its leaf and growth. This season several of 

 those marked produced fruit, being only three years old, 

 and every one of them was as worthless in fruit as they 

 were wild in growth, although they were all from improved 

 varieties. 



Occasionally a seedling will be grown that will never 

 produce fruit; for (see botanical description) our native 

 varieties are sometimes dioecious, that is, 

 one vine produces flowers having only pis- 

 tils, and another only stamens. Fig. 2 

 shows a grape flower (somewhat magnified) 

 after the petals have fallen. The pistil, c, 

 is in the center, while the five stamens, B, Fi s- 



