Notes and Gleanings. 375 



pruning. We have seen fine fruit produced from a vine not pruned at all, but 

 left to run over the top of a tree ; yet few are prepared to adopt such trellises for 

 their vines. 



The Yellow Crab-Apple. — This is not only a very ornamental tree when 

 in blossom in June, or when covered with its golden fruit in autumn, but very 

 useful, as its fruit, if properly treated, furnishes the most delicious jelly. Then 

 the fruit may be preserved in various ways, all very agreeable to the taste. The 

 tree is one of the most hardy, and usually gives a large crop of fair fruit. No 

 garden is complete without one or more of these beautiful and useful trees. It 

 is rather upright in growth, but forms a handsome head. 



Large Red Crab- Apple. — This is another good variety of the crab, but 

 not so showy as the former. It is worthy of a place, however, as it is in all 

 respects quite as useful as the yellow variety. One variety of the large red re- 

 sembles the yellow in shape ; and another is more flat, with a shorter stem. 



Small Red Crab-Apple. — This variety presents a very beautiful appear- 

 ance when in blossom, and also when in fruit ; though the fruit is much smaller 

 than the former-named varieties. The wood is smaller, and the habit of the tree 

 less upright. It is used for the same purposes as the others, but is not quite so 

 profitable. All of them maybe budded or grafted on to the common wild apple, 

 though the stock of a free-growing tree often outgrows the bud or scion. 



Montgomery Grape. — I mail you to-day a photograph of a cluster of 

 medium size, from a heavily-fruited three-year-old Montgomery Vine. 



This unfavorable season, a row of six vines, about equally laden, ripened half 

 their crop between the 5th and 20th of September ; the balance all ripe now, and 

 the foliage beautiful until this frosty morning. 



This cluster weighed twenty-three ounces, is pale-green, with faint straw 

 color on sunny side, covered with a white bloom ; the fruit so like the Chasselas, 

 that it is always suspected of being that variety by the knowing ones, until the 

 foliage shows the contrary fact. This vine has been acclimated about eighty 

 years, from unknown origin, in a town in Pennsylvania ; and was introduced here 

 by the Montgomery Family of Poughkeepsie, about twenty years since : where- 

 fore the name, extemporized for neighborhood convenience for want of the proper 

 name, and not a usurpation by the family. 



In thin, warm, gravelly, or sandy soils, it is immensely prolific, of magnifi- 

 cent clusters of slightly acid though melting and vinous dessert fruit, which, 

 though ripe in September, keeps well all winter. The vine is about as hardy as 

 the Adirondac and Allen's Hybrid ; a strong, short-jointed grower, better for 

 protection in winter, and shading from mid-day sun in summer ; much inclined to 

 overbear. It is better for close pruning and thinning ; and, so treated, the estab- 

 lished vine produces huge clusters of the marvellous weight of four pounds. 



Newburgh, N.Y., Oct. 8. W. A. R. 



