260 TRANSACTIONS OP THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



Samuel Allen Stryker, Ohio, communicates the following information in 

 relation to the above : 



" I would refer you to Mr. Benjamin Benson, of Townsend, Huron county, 

 Ohio, who says he was well acquainted with Mr. Charles Whitlow, and ha3 

 seen the plant. You will find an article on tlie suliject in the Patent Office 

 Reports of 1850, page 310, a portion of which I copy below, in which he 

 says : ' In looking over the Patent Office Keports for 1841, 1 find, on page 

 163, under the article Hemp, an extract from Niles' Register, Vol. 3, page 

 188, referring to the plant LyUca WJiilloioi, discovered by Charles Whitlow, 

 of New York. The plant alluded to underwent, at the time of its discov- 

 ery, a very critical examination as to its merits and adaptation to the pur- 

 poses of hemp and flax by the persons or committees appointed for the 

 purpose, and whose investigations were in accordance with the remarks 

 contained in the Kegister.' 



" Mr. B. further says : ' I was well acquainted with Mr. Whitlow, and 

 have seen the plant, together with a piece of the cloth manufactured from 

 it, which was remarkable for its white and silk-like appearance, and also 

 from its uncommon strength. Mr. Whitlow informed me,' says Mr. B., 

 * that General Macon, then a Representative in Congress, remarked that 

 the discovery was worth the whole contents of the Patent Office.' 



"Mr. B., in his description of the plant from recollection, says: 'The 

 plants have radical stems — or, rather, they may be said to be all radical, 

 as there are many springing from the same root. Smooth or glabrous, or 

 dark-purplish red, or dark-inahogany color, the leaf — lanceolate, serrate, 

 acuminate, sessile.' 



" ' Mr. Whitlow discovered it,' says Mr. B., ' a few miles from the city of 

 New York, on some of the moist grounds so common on the island.' " 



The Grape Cure. 



Mr. Robinson read an interesting article from a German paper about the' 

 "grape cure," as it is practiced at Durkheim, Germany, which will doubt- 

 less interest all readers of these reports : "Durkheim is on the bank of 

 the Rhine, in the Bavarian Palatinate, and in distance about 14 miles due 

 east from Manheim. The nearest railroad station is Neustadt, a small 

 town on the line from Mayence to the French frontier at Forbach. The 

 drive from Neustadt to Durkheim, a distance of about nine miles, is very 

 beautiful, and is to be preferred to that fi'om Manheim. The road is a 

 very good one, and runs along parallel to and at the base of the Haardt 

 range of mountains, on a slope which has been formed by the action of 

 water on the light, sandy, aud friable soil of those hills. Fx'om a few 

 miles to the north of Durkheim to about 20 miles to the south, the Haardt 

 range of mountains on the east side runs almost due north and south, leav- 

 ing an immense flat plain of about 12 to 14 miles in breadth, intervening 

 between it and the Rhine. This plain is very highly cultivated, and 

 abounds in every sort of crop. The Haardt range is considered to ter- 

 minate in the neighborhood of Landau, the mountain on the south side of 

 the stream which flows through that town being properly the Vosges, 

 though the one range is merely a continuation of the other. A slope of 

 the same character, due to the same causes as the one on which the road 



