62 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



and can be used on the currant ; also for the scale which 

 infests our trees, and doesn't infest our other small fruits 

 except the cuiTant and gooseberry. All small fruits need an 

 excess of moisture at harvesting time, and where irrigation 

 cannot be practised, very liberal cultivation early in the sea- 

 son and heavy mulching through the fruiting adds greatly to 

 the profits. 



Grapes : to talk to a Massachusetts audience about plant- 

 ing gi"apes commercially might seem somewhat surprising, 

 because you now have tons and hundreds of tons coming in 

 from outside States to supply 3^our wants. I don't suppose 

 a one-thousandth part is grown in Massachusetts, and yet 

 you can grow just as good and just as fine grapes in Massa- 

 chusetts as any that are now selling in your town here to-day. 

 You can grow them just as cheaply and you have just as 

 suitable land for a few of the standard varieties of grapes as 

 anybody in the country. Perhaps you are doing a more 

 profitable business ; perhaps you can't afford to grow a basket 

 of grapes for 8, or 9, or 11 cents, as our friends in western 

 New York and Ohio do ; but if you haven't a business better 

 than that, you can do it as Avell as they. On the other hand, 

 there is an enormous and increasing demand for grapes for 

 Avine making. Some of yon ladies Avill say, " We don't 

 want any wine made in our State ; " but if you could have 

 more good, pure, native wine drunk, and less poor gin and 

 ])eer, it would be better for the State as a whole. Our in- 

 coming foreigners — they are coming here from Italy largely 

 — use grape juice or wine as one of their sources of food 

 supply. They have been brought up on it for thousands of 

 years. Their children drink Avine for breakfast, dinner and 

 supper, and do not drink the poison tea or coflfee. Your 

 children cry for tea and coffee, and you fool them Avith 

 "cambric tea" for a Avhile, and a little later you put a little 

 more tea and coffee in, and gradually increase it from time 

 to time, and by and by they come to be the same old coffee 

 topers you fellows here are. These foreigners are not drunk- 

 ards and seldom become drunkards ; but it is one of their 

 sources of food supply, and they are going to have it, and if 

 they are going to get it from Massachusetts grapes, so much 



