WHAT FRUITS ABB AMELIORATED 44!) 



the improvement of our native fruits, is the fact that 

 in Dearly every case the amelioration has coin.' from 

 the force of circumstances and m>r from the choice or 

 design of men. Lei me be specific. The colonisl — 

 in common with other good peopl< — knew and Loved 

 wine. The beverage lias been a hand t<» hand— or 

 more truthfully a hand to mouth — companion of the 

 human family from the first. The attempl was there- 

 fore early and heroically made to grow the European 

 or wine grape in eastern America ; l>nt the attempt 

 failed. In sheer distress of failure, the grape-grower 

 driven to the nse of the native grape. Bow 

 literally true this was the reader may learn by read- 

 ing the history of the grape colony of tin- Dufours in 

 Kentucky and then in Indiana late in the Last century 

 and early in this, and noting the fact thai the exist- 

 ence <>t' the colony, as such, depended npon the be 

 of the wine. The salvation of the colony was the Alex- 

 ander or Cape grape, which, in a most surreptitious 

 way, had transferred itself fn>m tin- wild into planta- 

 tions which were at ftrsl designed to grow the Euro- 

 pean varieties : ami later <>n, John Adlum'a famous 

 Catawba, a product of tip- Carolina highlands, added 

 tin- crowning glory ami Bucoess to th<- experiment, 

 ami thence spread itself along the Ohio ami over 

 th«- Union. And yet, while the Alexander and the 

 Catawba were driving out the dm World types, the 

 grape-growers were at the very time making a most 

 determined oppositioo t<. native grapes. The fact i^ 

 that the nati\e grapes — the types which we now culti- 

 vate — came int<> domestication in Bpite of as. 



The aative |iliim> — <>f which two hundred <•■ more 

 horticultural varieties an' now described — came into 



