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whole country is under obligations, makes certain state- 

 ments (which have been published in the annual reports 

 of the State Board of Agriculture) to which I would 

 invite your special attention. He states : 



Firstly — That wherever Indian corn will ripen, there 

 the grape will also ripen. (He refers to the Concord 

 grape.) 



Secondly — That for field culture in our climate, trench- 

 ing and heavy manuring are not only unnecessary, but 

 actually injurious ; but that a soil cultivated to a suffi- 

 cient depth, and made sufficiently rich, for producing a 

 good crop of corn, is deep enough and rich enough for 

 grapes. Indeed, he claims that, for our climate, the 

 plants should not be set more than six inches deep in 

 the warm and dry soils ; nor more than four inches deep 

 in those which are strong and moist. 



Thirdly — That it requires no more labor and expense 

 " to take care of " an acre of grapes, than to " make " 

 an acre of corn ; since the latter implies the necessity 

 of carting on manure, ploughing, and successive hoe- 

 ings, while the grapes need fertilizing with a little plas- 

 ter of Paris, bone dust and ashes, only once in four or 

 five years, and consequently require less work to keep 

 down the weeds. As to prunmg, he says, " a little wise 

 neglect is better than a too frequent, or too severe 

 application of the knife." " You plough and cultivate 

 as soon as the frost is out, and again in the summer, to 

 keep down the weeds ; and you imicli the growing shoots 

 two or three times, to consolidate the growing wood ; — 

 this is all the care they need until the crop is ready to 

 gather." Moreover, he affirms that, when planted in 

 rows eight or ten feet apart, and six feet apart in the 

 TOW, and treated in the manner described, the Concord 



