! 34 VARIATION 



it is, must be credited with having produced many new forms 

 spontaneously. 



Grapes. 1 " North America is a natural vineyard," says Bailey, 

 and yet with the most skillful and persistent attempts to culti- 

 vate the European varieties for wine making, they have not suc- 

 ceeded. Under these circumstances nothing is more natural 

 than that valuable native varieties should arise, providing the 

 capacity was inherent in the species. 



John Adlum wrote, about 1823, "The way is to drop most 

 kinds of foreign vines at once and seek for the best kinds of our 

 largest native grapes." He is to be remembered for the intro- 

 duction of the famous Catawba, which was " found wild in the 

 woods of Buncombe County in extreme western North Carolina 

 in 1802." 



The Catawba is, therefore, almost certainly a sport of the 

 wild grape growing in profusion in that region. In 1843 came 

 the Diana, a seedling of the Catawba. 



In 1840 Mr. E. W. Bull bought a house in Concord. Some 

 seedlings of wild grapes sprang up about it, one of which fruited 

 in 1843. It was so excellent in quality that all others were 

 destroyed and the new variety was named the Concord. This 

 seedling has since given us the Worden, Moore Early, Pockling- 

 ton, Eaton, and Rockland, of which the first has long been 

 famous. The Concord, itself a mutant, seems to have been 

 peculiarly rich in possibilities for still other races. 



" In the year 1821 Honorable Hugh White, then in the junior 

 class in Hamilton College, New York, planted a seedling vine 

 in the grounds of Professor Noyes, on College Hill, which still 

 remains, and is the original Clinton." 



These are only a few of the many varieties of grape of Ameri- 

 can origin, tracing directly to wild native stock. 



Lost possibilities. Had other domesticated plants and animals 

 brought from Europe succeeded less admirably, what enrichment 

 might have come through the native flora and fauna of America ! 



The prairie chicken would have been improved if the domestic 

 hen had not succeeded. The turkey was a new thing and was 

 therefore seized upon. The buffalo would not now be extinct 



1 Bailey, Evolution of our Native Fruits, pp. 1-126. 



