AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 563 



manufacturing company — of what, think you 1 Why, of cast-iron 

 frames and troughs, mounted with shafts, cranks, treadles and 

 friction rollers, all for six dollars, for the perfect hanging of a 

 grindstone. 



Now, let us never hear of a farmer again disgracing his profes- 

 sion by borrowing a grindstone; and save us, we pray, from the 

 sound of a squeaking, groaning, old wooden shaft and crank, and 

 frame to match, such as now stands as a monument of folly and 

 shame, hardening in the broiling sun, upon many a farm, marking 

 the shiftless, thriftless character of its owner. 



A grindstone in operation would have been here for examina- 

 tion, only that it arrived a little too late. There is no mistake, 

 the world is improving, and I hope the happy time will come 

 when every man has a grindstone, mounted on just such a frame 

 as the Stone Manufacturing company, of Plantsville, Conn., would 

 furnish him. 



Dr. Underbill, of Croton Point, presented three samples of wine, 

 made by him there, from his Isabella and Catawba grapes. One 

 of pure Isabella, without sugar or spirit ; one of the two grapes, 

 mixed with some sugar; and one of Catawba. The wine of the 

 two grapes combined, pleased the members most. Dr. U. has 

 1,500 gallons of his wine in cellar. He has forty-two acres of 

 vineyard at Croton Point, on which he has put several thousand 

 cart loads of the muck from adjacent low lands; that muck, com- 

 posed as it is, of the leaves and leavings, vegetable and animal, 

 swept down from the higher lands to the swamps below. His 

 Croton Point seems to have been formed of the debris of the rocks 

 and mountains, northwest of it, heaped up on this beautiful tongue 

 of land projected from the eastern shore of the Hudson into the 

 river. He has protected this land from northern gales by forest 

 trees all along its northern side, which almost produce a calm on 

 his land, even in a gale of wind. He originally employed iron 

 wire of large size, extended from stout stakes at about fourteen 

 feet asunder. But now he has these stakes double that distance 

 apart, and finds that the bunches of grapes do better by reason of 

 more room for vibration of the wires — for occasionally he found 

 formerly, grapes crushed on the shorter spaces by violent winds,' 



