60 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



settled them on the Rapidan River. In 1770 an Act to encourage 

 wine making was passed by the Virginia Assembly in favor of 

 Andrew Estave. 



Failures of early attempts to grow Vinifera in the Carolinas and 

 Georgia were recorded by Alexander Hewitt in 1779. Much more 

 data could be cited that during the 200 years in which this country 

 was being colonized, the immigrants loved the vine and its products 

 and continued to bring with them material of vines from their 

 native land and experiments with such, in the hands of experts,, 

 were made on a large scale, but were failures nevertheless. 



Of course no one then knew that the Phylloxera Vestatriz, or 

 root louse of the vine, a native of this country, was omnipresent 

 ready to destroy the vine plantings wherever made. It, therefore, 

 remained for continual failures with Vinifera and a few accidental 

 successful plantings of native sorts to direct attention to the latter. 



A New Era in Grape History. 



To Dr. James Meade is accorded the honor of first perceiving 

 and setting forth in print the fact that American viticulture must 

 rise from American grapes. 



Just when and where the Scuppernong was discovered will never 

 be known. The name appears to hare been applied to it the be- 

 ginning of the nineteenth century. It was, no doubt, grown much 

 before then, and appears to be the first known American native 

 grape variety. It has steadily increased in popularity, has been 

 distributed to all parts of the Muscadine territory and today is 

 the most extensively grown Rotundifolia. 



The Alexander which appears to be a Labrusca hybrid, the real 

 history of which is not known, is one of, if not the first cultivated 

 American Euvitis variety. The Colony founded by Peter Lequax 

 in 1793, at Spring Mill, near Philadelphia, and the Swiss Society 

 founded in Kentucky, in 1790, of which John James Dufour was 

 leader, members of which Colony in 1801 settled at Vevay, Indiana, 

 failed in growing Vinifera varieties, but succeeded with the Alex- 

 ander. 



Bland, a Labrusca X Vinifera hybrid, was brought to notice byr 



