MnwkMEm erie 
AGRICULTURE. &7 
east of the Rocky Mountains, and often devastates the thriftiest 
plantations in the course of a single season. It is not definitely 
ascertained whether the fungoid forms of vegetation which accom- 
pany apple and pear blight are prevenient or consequent to the 
disordered condition of the sap and cellulose tissues of the trees 
affected ; and as this disease probably owes its origin to inappre- 
ciable atmospheric influences incident to our climate, and peculiar 
to North America, it is likely to baffle all remedial treatments. 
Root-pruning, and adsence of culture, have been advocated and 
practiced as preventive remedies with varying success. 
‘The Peach is often chary of its delightful favors in the Northern 
division of the State, but under the milder and more genial clime 
of the South and Center, peaches of the most excellent quality are 
produced in plenty. The choicer budded varieties yield paying 
crops about three years out of five. The consumption of peaches 
is confined mainly to home use and the St. Louis market. 
Cherries of the acid Morrello type, abound in great plenty and 
bear constant crops; Duke, Bigarreau and other varieties of the 
sweet cherry, are not entirely hardy, and are grown only in a 
limited way. Plums, Apricots and Nectarines succeed perfectly, 
but their culture is neglected on account of the repeated and 
annually recurring destruction of the unripe fruit by several insects 
belonging to the family of Curculionide. 
Small Fruits. Various kinds of cultivated berries come in at a 
time during summer when the supply of apples is exhausted, and last 
successively until peaches and grapes begin to ripen, supplying the 
eye and the palate with a variety of fragrant and delicious dainties ; 
while their pleasantly acidulated juices exert a wholesome influence 
upon the human system at the approach of warm weather. During 
the last ten years, great progress has been made in small fruit cul- 
ture, and a much wider area is now devoted to their cultivation 
than formerly. The dissemination of information by the Agricul- 
tural and Horticultural Press, is ina great measure the cause of our 
advancement upon this subject. With good soil, careful prepara- 
tion of the land, clean culture, and, when practicable, the 
application of mulching, Strawberries, Gooseberries, Currants, 
Raspberries and Blackberries, yield satisfactory returns for the 
capital and labor invested. From the statistical tables of the United 
States Census, it appears that the value of orchard products has 
increased more than three-fold in Missouri during the last ten 
years, and now reaches the important sum of $2,617,463 annually. 
Tue Grape.—tThe knowledge of this noblest of fruits, and its 
use by man, are lost in the maze of ages. It was cultivated by the 
Jews, the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, and various other 
ancient nations of the Old World long before the Christian era. 
The vine-grape seems to have invited the attention of the settlers 
soon after the colonization of America. As early as the year 1620, 
attempts were made by a London company to plant a vineyard in 
Virginia. In 1683, WILLIAM PENN planted vines near Philadelphia 
but failed of success. During the latter half of the 18th century, 
the French settlers in Illinois were in the habit of shipping to New 
Orleans on flatboats, considerable quantities of wine made from the 
native wild grapes growing in profusion in the American Bottom, 
opposite the present site of St. Louis. In 1801, Swiss immigrants 
founded a colony which they named Vevay, in the present county 
of Switzerland, Indiana, some forty miles below Cincinnati, on 
the Ohio River, with the purpose of prosecuting the culture of the 
grape on an extensive scale, but seem to have met with such dis- 
couraging want of success, that they ultimately abandoned the pro- 
ject altogether. Hitherto experiments in grape culture had been 
confined to the varieties of the Vitis vinifera, the cultivated wine- 
grape of Europe, which is now generally believed to be too 
tender to withstand the meteorologic changes of heat and cold, 
humidity and dryness, inherent to the climate of the Grand East- 
ern Division of Continental North America. But the recent dis- 
coveries of our State Entomologist, relative to the PAr/loxera Vas- 
tatrix,—an insect which is insidiously sapping the roots of our 
vines, and is particularly partial to the wmfera,—indicate that our 
failure with this species in Missouri is not due to vicissitudes of 
climate alone, and lead us to hope that, -with proper treatment, 
we may yet successfully grow it. The first decided impulse 
given to this branch of economic industry, was the introduction 
‘ by Joun Apium, of Georgetown, District of Columbia, of the 
Catawba, a native variety which was for many years the stand- 
ard wine grape of the country, but is now being discarded in 
some sections, on account of its unreliability and tendency to 
disease. Since the discovery of the adaptation of ameliorated 
varieties of the Vitis labrusca, Vitis estivalis, and other native 
wild grapes of our forests for grape culture, a great number of new 
kinds have been originated from seedlings or otherwise, and are 
now grown extensively. On the sunny hill-sides of Missouri, the 
grape finds a congenial home, and millions of wild wines abound 
everywhere in the forests, often trailing their graceful coils in mazy 
tangles on the ground, or climbing to the summit of the highest 
trees. The superior adaptability of the peculiar arenaceous deposit 
of magnesian or Permian formation on the river blufis, called Zaess, 
to the culture of the grape, is well known to vineyardists. Follow- 
ing the first prosperous attempts at wine manufacture at Herman in 
1846, and impelled by their success, viticulture has increased with 
wonderful rapidity over all parts of the State, until, to-day, thousands 
of hills are crowned with the graceful foliage and pendent, purple- 
colored clusters of this beautiful shrub, and hundreds of tons are 
produced, where one pound grew thirty years ago. Great quanti- 
ties of grapes are consumed in the fresh state, but the chief product 
of vineyards must ever be wine, and we cannot but express the hope 
that the time may soon come, when the generous vintages of our 
Concords, Cynthianas and Rulanders, equaling in quality and 
surpassing in purity the Medocs of France, the light Hocks of 
Germany, or the Xeres of Spain, will universally supplant the use, 
or rather abuse, of alcoholic beverages, and will adorn the side- 
beard and the dessert-table of every home in Missouri. 
‘The insufficiency of the estimates sent forth to the world by the 
United States Census, cannot be better exemplified than by noting 
its computation of the wine production of Missouri. The statistical 
tables of this publication estimate the aggregate number of gallons 
grown in Missouri in 1870 at 326,173, while the single county of 
Gasconade, nearly or quite reached this amount alone, and the 
total production of the State, according to the assertions of the 
writers best informed on the subject, did not fall much short of 
1,000,000 gallons, representing a value of at least $700,000. 
