Editor's Letter Box. 



281 



EDITOR'S LETTER BOX. 



OsPAWATTAJiiE, Miami Co , Kans., ) 

 August 15, 1870. \ 



Friend Husmann : 



Enclosed I send you a leaf of a 

 grape vine that has been sold here for 

 Norton's Virginia. The fruit resem- 

 bles the Clinton, but is larger and very 

 black, and fully colored at this time. 

 We are at a loss what to call it. Tha 

 flavor is like the Clinton. Thin skin 

 with a large amount of coloring mat- 

 ter. Please give us your opinion of 

 it. Very respectfully, 



A. Gove, P. M. 



[The leaf was much shriveled, and 

 hard to identifj*. We are inclined to 

 believe it the Franklin, from your 

 •desci'lption. — Ed.] 



Bridgeport, August 15, 1870. 



Mr. George Husmann : 



A few words how grapes are doing 

 here with me : Hartford Prolific and 

 Ives grapes, were pretty well colored 

 the first of this month here, and are 

 now getting pretty good. They are 

 a little earlier than usual, I think, 

 owing to a dry spell of weather at 

 that time ; but now it is plenty wet 

 here. Concords are doing well; Nor- 

 ton's Virginia are doing well. I left 

 some of the vines tied to the trellis 

 last winter, and they were not frozen 

 any in the least. I have a few vines 

 of Herbemont and Cunningham. They 

 are doing well. I left one vine of 

 Herbemont tied to the trellis last win- 

 ter. It did not freeze any, but I had 

 pruned the unripe wood off. 



There is no rot in any of my gra2)es. 

 The soil of vineyard is slate, mixed 

 with sand and some small sand stones. 



Have about one acre planted, and 

 only part of it bearing its first crop. 



Mr. Husmann, in your Book on 

 Grapes and Wine, page 169, in regard 

 to making gallized wine, I can not 

 fully understand it. There you do 

 not say whether joxx dissolve the 

 sugar in the water before you put it 

 on the husks, or whether you dissolve 

 the sugar in the water after it is 

 pressed from the husks. You claim 

 that the must should be weighed with 

 the saccharometer before fermentation 

 sets in. I would think that this is 

 right. But if the water is put on the 

 husks, and left to fqrment for a time, 

 it would then appear that fermenta- 

 tion being so strong the saccharome- 

 ter could not give the correct weight 

 of it, and therefore by j)uttingin the 

 sugar after being pressed, to bring it 

 up to the normal, still might not be 

 exactly right on account of the fer- 

 mentation being somewhat in the 

 way. But again, on the other hand, 

 to put in the sugar to the water, and 

 then afterwards put it on the husks, 

 I would think would bo entirely 

 wrong, as I think there would be a 

 considerable amount of sugar left in 

 the husks, and as this sugar is a dif- 

 ferent kind of sugar from that con- 

 tained in the grape. 



You will please write me a few 

 lines and let me know how you man- 

 age to get at the right strength of the 

 gallized must. 1 suppose by what I 

 can understand, you say it takes 

 about two pounds of sugar to bring 

 it up to 80 degrees. I suppose you 

 come at it in this way : that you put 



