64 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



GRAPE CULTURE, BY E. W. BULL, OP CONCORD. 



I shall give a familiar talk upon grape culture, and try to 

 show that it may be successfully introduced into New England, 

 and counted upon as a constant and sure crop as confidently, 

 and even more confidently than your apple crop. Careful 

 inquiries instituted by Colonel Wilder, some years since, showed 

 tliat the value of the fruit crop of Massachusetts was not less 

 than two millions of dollars. Yet our fruit crop is rather uncer- 

 tain. Pears only succeed constantly in sheltered locations and 

 in a soil properly adapted to them. Apples, even, are failing, 

 as our apple growers complain, constantly, more and more every 

 year. From the ravages of insects, the vicissitudes of the sea- 

 sons, and, possibly, as a committee of this Board thought they 

 found, some years since, from neglect of the proper modes of 

 culture — from imperfect manipulations in the nursery — in short, 

 from various causes, the apple seems to be less certain than 

 formerly, and our fruit crop less certain as a matter of income ; 

 and if it ceases to be profitable, it must be given up. A friend 

 of mine, whom I have known for years, who has four acres of 

 as handsome apple trees as you can find in Massachusetts, told 

 me the other day, that after fourteen years of cultivation, during 

 the whole of which time they have been of bearing size, and 

 have borne occasionally, he is about to cut them down, because 

 they do not, on the whole, cover the actual expense of cultiva- 

 tion ; and he comes to me to see whether the grape cannot be 

 grown there, and whether, if so, it will pay. 



The grape is, perhaps, the most ancient fruit known to man. 

 In periods of the most remote antiquity, ever ^nce there has 

 been any historic record of fruit, there has been a record of 

 grape culture ; and in all ages, it has been considered the type 

 of human felicity to sit under the grape in peace and security. 

 There would not be, I think, this uniform testimony to the early 

 and continued cultivation of the grape, on the part of all writers, 

 in all ages, had it not been considered, in all times, the best 

 fruit grown — and that is my opinion. I am, perhaps, something 

 of an enthusiast in the culture of the grape. I speak to you 

 of it out of my experience of more than twenty-five years. If I 

 speak in the first person singular so often as to lay myself open 

 to the charge of egotism, I beg you will consider that I do it. 



