204 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



us the green apple and the green gage, carbon, manganese, and the com- 

 pounds of hydrogen give us the blackberry; while the strawberry is 

 colored by an oxyd of iron — oftentimes a carbonate — and by tannic acid; 

 indeed, the diversities and delicacies of shades of nature are combined 

 with a Master's hand, no less than that of the Almighty Creator. Now,. 

 all other things being equal, soils and rocks that produce the largest 

 amount of materials and constituents that, when combined, make up the 

 materials of fruit, will produce the best fruit, and in its greatest perfec- 

 tion. If there is no potash or carbon found in a soil, we will find no trees; 

 and if we cannot find nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, potash, soda, 

 magnesia, manganese, lime, sulphur, alumina and silica in the soils, we 

 have neither vegetation nor animal production exhibited; and where these 

 articles with some few others are produced, such as phosphoric acid, sul- 

 phuric acid, muriatic acid, nitric acid, combined with salts and soils, nature 

 is bounteous in all her productions. In herbs, trees, fruits and flowers, 

 all is smiling, all is sweet. There are no soils that combine so many of 

 the ingredients that constitute fruits as the primitive soils of New England, 

 New York and the Alleghany mountains. No fvuit is richer in taste or more 

 luscious and healthy in its growth than those found in New England; no 

 better aroma is found than amongst the flowers of trees grown on these 

 soils; nor is there better taste or more delicate flavor to any fruits grown 

 anywhere else. We find the apples of New England sent to China, CaK 

 cutta, South America and the West Indies, and esteemed when far away 

 from home as tlie choicest of nature's productions. The high flavor of the 

 New England fruits ships them to Europe to be eaten by the English, the 

 French and the Germans ; indeed, when the fruits of Europe were brought 

 to the western continent they improved wonderfully in size, flavor and 

 delicacy by being grown upon our primitive soils. 



In applying the fire and heat to fruits, and the reduction of them to 

 ashes, the carbon, the ammonia, the sulphur, the water, the hydrogen and 

 nitrogen, and the composition of oils which are contained more or less in 

 the skins and rinds of the fruit, are consumed and lost; in other words, they 

 are burned up, and the vapor flies off", and the process of reducing the fruits 

 to ashes destroys a very large portion of the substance of the fruit itself. 

 Grapes, in order to make good wine, should be entirely ripe, and then, on 

 analysis, they will produce the most sugar called grape sugar. The better 

 kinds of grapes, when ripe, produce from eleven to twenty-two per cent, of 

 what is called "grape sugar," while unripe grapes produce from four to ten 

 per cent.; that is, after the grapes have become a natural size, but picked 

 before the saccharine matter has developed itself. Unripe grapes cannot be 

 turned into good wine without the addition of much sugar; hence it is 

 when the season is short and cold and wet the grapes do not mature them- 

 selves so as to produce the grape sugar which is essential to the making 

 of good wine. Our granite hills contain all the elements in the soils 

 for making excellent wine, when the grapes are grown on the side hills 

 pitching to the southward and' eastward; and all along the trap rock for- 

 mations in the United States the soil contains elements abundant for the 

 growth of the best and most luxuriant fruits of the grape, apple, goose- 

 berry, strawberry and other small fruits. 



