78 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



have ill the latter part of August and early in September. 

 Therefore you want an early ripening grape, if it be possible ; 

 but if your seedling be a little late, or if the weight or the 

 quality does not come quite up to your expectations, by reason 

 of the circumstances I have just mentioned, do not reject it 

 altogether ; but if it be worth keeping at all, count upon its 

 being, in a more favorable season, like this last, much better. 



As to soil affecting the quahty of the grape, I ought to say a 

 word. It does. The best grapes are grown in the sweetest and 

 best soil. That is to say, soil naturally sweet of itself and fed 

 with such vegetable and animal manures as do not convey to it 

 disagreeable odors ; for the soil takes odor, and the grape takes 

 odor from the soil. I know that absolutely, for, having applied 

 some wool waste to some young seedling vines which I wanted 

 to get rapidly forward, — seedlings which had borne once, and of 

 which I wanted to see a second crop, — which wool waste was unc- 

 tuous with fat and grease, will you believe it when I tell you that 

 I found the abominable flavor of that half decayed wool waste in 

 my grape in the autumn, and so did everybody who tasted it. 

 The grape abhors foul odors. It is a dainty feeder. Although 

 it will bear so much feeding, under certain circumstances, yet it 

 absolutely needs, in my judgment, only that peculiar kind of 

 feeding which comes from vegetable debris and those minerals 

 which its constitution requires. 



I have recommended the raising of seedlings by direct descent 

 for two reasons ; because, in the first place, hybridization is so 

 difficult ; and because, in the next place, when you hybridize 

 the finer grapes known to us now, which are tender grapes, 

 upon the more hardy mother grape, to get the quality of the 

 better grape and the hardiliood of the mother grape, we are not 

 quite sure of success. It is a hybrid, and must always be ; and 

 although it may have more of the hardy constitution of the 

 mother than of the tender constitution of the higher flavored 

 and better male parent, still, it will have a constitutional pre- 

 disposition to tenderness ; and though you may possibly get a 

 grape which will bear the climate, it is more than likely that in 

 that event, you have not a true hybrid, — that is, a hybrid that is 

 accepted without dispute as a true hybrid, — that is hardy. I 

 know that Mr. Rogers has raised some hybrid grapes which are 

 of good quality, and great acquisitions, as I think ; but I 



