fO THE HOME ACRE. 



read everything before we start a little vineyard or 

 go a-courting. 



It is said that about two , thousand known and 

 named varieties of grapes have been and are being 

 grown in Europe; and all these are supposed to 

 have been developed from one species ( Vitis 

 vinifera), which originally was the wild product 

 of Nature, like those growing in our thickets and 

 forests. One can scarcely suppose this possible 

 when contemplating a cluster of Tokay or some 

 other highly developed variety of the hot-house. 

 Yet the native vine, which began to " yield fruit 

 after his kind, the third day " (whatever may have 

 been the length of that day) , may have been, after 

 all, a good starting-point in the process of develop- 

 ment. One can hardly believe that the "one clus- 

 ter of grapes " which the burdened spies, returning 

 from Palestine, bore " between two of them upon a 

 staff," was the result of high scientific culture. In 

 that clime, and when the world was young, Nature 

 must have been more beneficent than now. It is 

 certain that no such cluster ever hung from the 

 native vines of this land ; yet it is from our wild 

 species, whose fruit the Indians shared with the 

 birds and foxes (when not hanging so high as to 

 be sour) that we have developed the delicious 

 varieties of our out-door vineyards. For about 

 two centuries our forefathers kept on planting 



