AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 297 



hints about liis specialty, grape culture; but after a most persever- 

 ing effort to draw out a single thing that would be useful to others, 

 he gave up in despair. We heard several members say that the 

 only inference they could draw from Avhat he did say was that he 

 would not recommend any one to try to grow vines from layers 

 or cuttings, but always to procure young plants with roots, 

 because he kept roots to sell. He did say the best manure for 

 vines is vegetable mould and bones, and that cuttings should 

 only be cut from bearing buds, and not planted deep, and only 

 on well drained land. 



PROGRESS OF THE CHOLERA. 



Mr. Meigs thought, that so far as experience has now gone, the 

 cholera in men, has evinced a similarity in animals and vegetables, 

 too striking to be overlooked. He has not always been fortunate 

 in life, for he had yellow fever twice in Georgia, in the first two 

 years in this century, and in Philadelphia, in the yellow fever of 

 1805; and moreover, was sent to the Legislature of New-York, 

 in 1818; to the sixteenth Congress, in 1819 and 1820; and to the 

 Board of Aldermen of New-York, in 1831; and, in 1832, being 

 president of the board, he officially was one of the board of health. 

 Rumors of cholera advancing from the east, he used all his resources 

 and labors, and some public money, in gathering all possible know- 

 ledge of the fearful enemy. He visited the low, dirty parts of the 

 city; found, in the Fifth ward, a horrible building, about one 

 hundred feet long by twelve deep, filled in by two hundred and 

 four of the lowest population. Had it limed and cleared as much 

 as possible, expecting cholera to kill them by wholesale. He 

 visited the celebrated Five Points, during the height of the cholera, 

 where, instead of the sad countenance in all parts of the city, he 

 found the people in numbers crawled out of their damp cellars, 

 with ceilings as high as the between decks of a privateer — with 

 pots and kettles on tripods or stones, cooking the worst meat, with 

 stale corn, turnips, cabbages, &c., and yellow, large cucumbers, 

 with overgrown green ones, pickled in vitriolized vinegar — 

 laughing, joking, in a manner unknown utterly to the clean parts 

 and clean inhabitants of the city. And why is it necessary to 



