To Our Readers. 



321 



impei'fect fermentation ; why so I 

 cannot say, except it be in the fact 

 that instead of the wine constantly 

 traveling through air, from cask to 

 cask, with a, positive loss of a preserv- 

 ing element — -the carbonic acid gas — 

 the action is reversed, the wine remains 

 quiet in the cask, the air is introduced 

 suddenly, promptly and briefly, with 

 a supposable limited deperdition of 



the preserving element, besides reduc- 

 ing ihe many rackings heretofore 

 considered necessary to perfect a wine 

 before bottling. All of which I hope 

 may prove in time positive advantages 

 difficult to deny. Meanwhile experi- 

 ence must become our teacher. 



Emil Baxter. 



GoLDKN Hills Vin-eyakd, Niiuvoo, ni. 



TO OUR READERS. 



•-I had rather lose my eye-teeth than 

 have the Grape Culturist stop, and 

 will propose that you allow every sub- 

 scriber who wishes a few lines of ad- 

 vertisement, and charge him five or 

 ten dollai's a year. Say you add 

 twenty pages more to ihe Culturist, 

 on this there would be one thousand 

 lines, and five to a subscriber, for 

 five dollars, would add one thousand 

 dollars to your 'pocket. The addi- 

 tional twenty pages could not add 

 much to the cost. Yours truly, 

 <' Geo. M. Dewey. 



" Keytesvii.i.i;, Mo." 



[The above is but one of many simi- 

 lar communications, and we can as- 

 sure our friends that they are very 

 gratifying to us, as they show that 

 our labors and those of our contribu- 

 tors are duly appreciated by the grape 

 growers, and that they, as a class, 

 need a medium for the interchange of 

 their experience and thoughts. But 

 although gratif^nng to our feelings as 

 such e.Nlpressions must be, they still 

 ''do not make the pot boil," as the 

 old saying is, and we find ourselves at 

 the close of the year, not alone with- 

 out remuneration for our labors, but 



absolutely out of pocket by the enter- 

 prise. Wo think we may say, with- 

 out self laudation, that we have la- 

 bored earnestly and hard for the good 

 of the cause 5 we have tried to give all 

 we could collect, with strict imparti- 

 ality, from all parts of the country, 

 that could be of benefit to our read- 

 ers. We have not filled half of our 

 pages with paltry novels, sentimental 

 poetry or flat jokes, as we see in some 

 of our so-called agricultural papers, 

 but tried to give our readers the full 

 value of their money in actual expe- 

 rience and useful facts, refei'ring only 

 to our legitimate subject, the culture 

 of the grape and the making of wine. 

 We have stolen many an hour from 

 sleep, and often racked an aching 

 brain for the sake of the cause, and, 

 as we hope, for the benefit of our read- 

 ers; and we have done it gladly and 

 willingly, as a labor of love. But we 

 cannot afl'ord to lose more money than 

 we have already done, and must, with 

 this numbei', say " good bye " to our 

 readers, unless they themselves step 

 in and suppoi't an institution which 

 has been started for their benefit. We 

 have thought long and anxiously upon 



