112 The Western Pomologist and Gardener. 187 S 



they were no better than other known sorts ; and so letting his feelings of progress, and 

 a wish to better man as he bettered his pocket, overcome him, until the expression has 

 almost become a by-word in Ohio, when a man talks of raising seedlings : " Yes, do like 

 Campbell, and you'll win — over the left!" not strictly refined, I acknowledge, but neverr- 

 theless expressive. Mr Campbell makes as a first requisite, or as the foundation, a healthy, 

 hardy, vigorous vine ; next productiveness; then size, flavor and quality of fruit. His 

 experience, as 1 read it, has been not only with the production of seedlings hybridized, 

 but with crossing of native varieties ; and the results, so far as I gather them, are, that 

 from the production or crossing of native varieties come the greatest probabilities toward 

 a grape that will meet the exposure, rough treatment and climate of our American vine- 

 yards, and yet produce a grape that shall meet both the taste of an uncultivated people 

 (to whom a certain amount must be sold in order to make a profit) and at the same time 

 can be manufactured into a wine of quality superior to any yet known as the product of 

 our native varieties. Mr. Campbell has fully and fairly spread out his experiments and 

 results in the transactions of the American Pomological Society, as well as in the Ohio 

 Horticultural Societies, to which I refer the reader for details. 



Mr. Campbell regards (supported by testimoney favorable of all the States) Concord as 

 the possessor of all the requisites of the vine, except in quality of fruit ; and so far, ac- 

 cording to my reading and knowledge, his last results are from the crossing of Concord 

 and Delaware, using the Concord as the pistillate or female. 



Mr. Ricketts, whose products have been numerous, and many of them beautiful grapes, 

 as grown in his own partially sheltered garden, has, however, mainly pursued the practice 

 of hybridizing our native sorts with the foreign. 



The result, as I before said, of some fine varieties, which, by tests for wine purposes, 

 have excelled all others known, he has named a few — and perhaps sold — of them. Of 

 his seedlings yet under numbers, my recorded notes favor No. 10, a grape of a sherry wine 

 ■color, produced by the Hartford Prolific, as female, and Purple Damascus ; also No. 33, a 

 large, compact bunch, large berry, greenish amber-yellow in color, produced by the Clin- 

 ton, as female, and Muscat of Alexandria, as of great promise. 



While these seedlings in the originator's own ground present as vigorous and healthy 

 appearance, and perhaps more so than our native sorts, j'et the tendency to mildew, which 

 seems to prevail in all our varieties claiming in them foreign blood, tends to create a doubt 

 that for the good of all we hope will be dispelled when these seedlings are sent out and 

 tended in varios locations and soils. 



Dr. Wylie, of South Carolina, has pursued the same course of Mr. Rickets, or rather 

 Mr. Ricketfs has followed Dr. Wylie, for I think the former was first in the field; but so 

 far as I can judge from his own (Dr. Wylie's) reports, and from examination of some cf 

 the yines of his seeelings, the apparent constitution of the foreign is so retained in them 

 that there is little promise of their ever becoming valuable as vineyard grapes or for gen- 

 eral cultivation. — F, R. Elliott, in Wine and Fruit Recorder. 



• Oranges In Florida. 



We have made diligent inquiry from old, experienced cultivators, and from those who 

 have collected the traditions of orange growing, and the result seems to be that, apart 

 from the danger of frost, the orange crop is the most steady and certain of any known 

 fruit. ■ 



In regard to our own grove, consisting of 115 trees on an acre and a half of ground, 

 we find that there has been an a^verage crop matured of 60,000 a year, every year for 

 the five years we have had it. Two years the crop was lost through sudden frost com- 

 ing after it was fully perfected. But those two years are the only ones since 1835 when a 

 crop has been lost or damaged through frost. 



Our friend inquires with regard to the orange -insect. This was an epidemic which 

 prevailed some fifteen or twenty years ago, destroying the trees as the canker-worms did 

 the apple trees. It was a variety of the scale-bug; but nothing has been seen of it in an 



