AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 301 



as to be difficult to handle — it is considered to be originally 

 foreign. The Mustang and El Paso are particular varieties in 

 Texas. The Mustang is a wild native and the Paso a cultivated 

 variety. The Colony of El Paso is near the cataracts of the Rio 

 Grande. It is a garden of twenty-two square miles, inhabited by 

 3,000 souls, situated about half way from Chihuahua to Sta Fe. 

 This valley yields about 1,000,000 quarts of wine — perhaps the 

 best in the world; its price there is about forty cents a quart. 

 They also make as good raisins as those of Spain or Greece. The 

 Mustang grape is extremely abundant in Texas, and wine analo- 

 gous to Port is made of it. The culture of the vine in Alabama 

 begins to assume importance, — the grapes are very loiney, (tres 

 vineuses) at a second pressing they still give very potable wine. 

 Wild grapes in Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas, are known by 

 the names of the fox, the chicken, the bemi and the hull. One of 

 these has been cultivated successfully, so that its wine has been 

 sold by the name of the Bland Madeira. North Carolina is the 

 native country of the Catawba, Herbemont and Scuppernong. 

 The two first owe their rej)utation to the care of the cultivators 

 of Ohio and New- York, and are but little cultivated in their 

 native region. The vines of the Scuppernong are iound growing 

 from tlie Currituck to the southern counties' of Cape Fear, and 

 westward as far as the Blue Mountains. Wines made of it differ 

 so much in quality that some sell for twenty cents a quart, and 

 others for twenty-five to thirty francs a barrel, (|5 to $6 a barrel.) 

 What might it become with age 1 It is hard and dry now without 

 sugar. And is not the Sercial, the king of the wines of Madeira, 

 hard, rough and repulsive, like some old Presbyterian, during its 

 first year of age 1 The mode of culture of the Scuppernong 

 reminds us of the Lombardy festoon made of vine growth. Vir- 

 ginia seems to us better suited to the culture of the grape than 

 any other of the states. New Jersey formerly cultivated the vine, 

 and srt the beginning of this century Indiana furnished the largest 

 quantity of wines from plants taken originally from Vevay, in 

 Switzerland. 



The Catawba and Isabella grapes were discovered growing wild 

 in Buncomb county. North Carolina. In 1826, Major Adlam, an 



