26 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



tage, so he set to work and planted many others, also vines and 

 shrubs, making a bower of the formerly barren, shadeless house. 

 The wealth of foliage about his place now is largely due to his 

 personal efforts and his love for trees. 



Among Mr. Bull's many friends was his neighbor Hawthorne, 

 who, though reserved and retiring with most men, gave to this sim- 

 ple man much of his time, and Hawthor"/:e's son, Julian, in writing 

 his father's memoirs, speaks of ]\Ir. Bull as follows: "Another 

 neighbor of ours, hardly less known to fame, though in a widely 

 different line of usefulness, makes a very distinct picture in my mind; 

 this was Ephraim W. Bull, the inventor of the Concord grape. 

 He was eccentric as his name, but he was a genuine and substantive 

 man, and my father took a great fancy to him, which was recipro- 

 cated. He was short and powerful with long arms and a big head 

 covered with bushy hair, and a jungle beard from which looked out 

 a pair of eyes singularly brilliant and penetrating. He had brains 

 to think with as well as strong and skilful hands to work with; he 

 personally did three-fourths of the labor on his vineyard and every 

 grape vine had his separate care. He often came over and sat with 

 my father in the summer house on the hill and there talked about 

 politics, sociology, morals, and human nature with an occasional 

 lecture on grape culture." 



x\nother friend of INIr. Bull's was Professor Agassiz, who invited 

 him to lecture on grape culture at Harvard, which he did in 1865. 



In 1855 the INIassachusetts Horticultural Society awarded ]Mr. 

 Bull a silver medal for the Concord grape, and in 1873 a silver 

 medal for seedling grapes; also the gold medal of the society, valued 

 at $60, was awarded him for the production of the best hardy 

 seedling grape, the Concord, which was proved after a thorough 

 trial so universally adapted to general cultivation throughout the 

 United States and the most reliable grape for vineyard cultivation 

 in Massachusetts. Mr. Bull became a member of tlie ^Slassa- 

 chusetts Horticultural Society in 1853 and was elected an honorary 

 member in 1892. 



Few people at the time the Concord grape was introduced real- 

 ized what this discovery was to mean to horticulture, and many do 

 not now place the credit where it is due. When it is understood 

 that the Concord grape was not the end of this great movement, 



