V1H PREFACE. 



an appropriate division of labour, and thereby to cause other products to realize 

 a fair valuation. It is not by turning its whole attention to one point, that a 

 nation advances its resources, but by seeking to develope the natural riches of 

 every description which her soil and climate are susceptible of furnishing ; thence 

 realizing, first, the necessary supplies for her own population, by which she se- 

 cures to herself a sure and regular market for her products to a certain extent, 

 and secondly, a surplus sufficient for foreign export. 



Another great benefit which will result from an assiduous improvement of our 

 national resources, is that it must permanently secure to us the balance of trade ; 

 the prompt tendency of which will be to produce a return of all our public stocks 

 now held in Europe, the interest on -which is annually draining from ias an enor- 

 mous taxation on our labour. 



It is a subject of gratulation that the public attention seems so fully drawn to 

 the culture of the grape. It was not until after immense difficulties that the 

 vine was brought to its present state of successful culture in France ; and it 

 should be no cause for discouragement, if some experiments are made in this 

 country without the anticipated success. In fact, so many causes exist by which 

 an error in judgment, or the want of the necessary information, may produce a 

 failure, that it would be a miracle if all were to succeed. Already, for years, 

 has the vine been most successfully cultivated on the Rhine ; and in latitude 50 

 degrees, the most choice Rhenish wines are made. Recent accounts tell us of 

 vineyards having been established in the more northern parts of Germany, and 

 in high latitudes in Russia ; and the Swiss have been, for a course of years, most 

 plentifully supplied with wine from their own soil. Shall then America alone 

 be debarred from this, one of the bountiful gifts of nature ? Shall a country, 

 possessing every variety of climate which is combined in all the wine countries 

 of Europe, and extending through all the degrees of latitude which are there 

 deemed the most genial to its growth and produce, be said to be totally inap- 

 propriate to its success ? Shall it be said that a plant, which culture has accom- 

 modated to almost every other clime to which it has been introduced, can find no 

 spot whereon to flourish, in a country extending from the 25th to the 47th degree 

 of latitude ; and that we can boast no such congenial soil in an empire, whose 

 bounds are the St. Lawrence and the Gulf of Mexico, and whose settlements 

 already extend from the shores of the Atlantic to the sources of the Missouri ? 

 It is high time such delusions of blinded theorists should give way to the lights 

 of reason and of judgment, and that the culture of the vine, to every variety of 

 which we have a soil and climate suitable to offer, should assume that importance 

 to which it has already attained in countries possessing comparatively few ad- 

 vantages. Let, then, the beams of intelligence, which are imparting so much 

 benefit to mankind by their wide diffusion, disperse these clouds of ignorance aod 

 error from the enlightened horticulturists of the American republic. 



