AGRICULTURE. 195 
ripe, with a grayish dust, which brushes off, leaving a glossy, 
smooth skin; is about half an inch in diameter at its largest 
size; has a thin, sweet juice, with more meat and a little fruiti- 
ness of a flavor. 
The Sonoma grape makes a light wine, resembling claret ; 
the Los Angeles grape makes a strong wine, resembling port 
and sherry. The two grapes are classed together as the “‘ Mis- 
sion,” “Native,” or “Californian” grapes, and were the only 
varieties cultivated here previous to 1853. In that year the 
importation of foreign grapes commenced, and now about two 
hundred varieties are cultivated. The Mission grapes are 
hardy, healthy, long-lived, productive, and early in coming into 
bearing; but they are surpassed in flavor, hardiness, produc- 
tiveness, earliness of ripening, and earliness of bearing, by 
many foreign varieties, which, so far as is known, are not infe- 
rior in any respect. The latter have been tried, however, only 
three or four years, and therefore we cannot speak positively 
whether they will prove so long-lived, or whether they will be 
equal in some other points to the Mission grapes. 
Still, the superiority of the foreign grapes is so great, that 
no reasonable man, acquainted with the subject, doubts that 
they will drive the Mission grapes out of the market. Flavor 
is a matter of vast importance in fresh fruit, and the want of it 
is the great defect of the Mission grape, which will not com- 
mand more than six or eight cents per pound in the San Fran- 
cisco market, at the very time that fine forcign varicties bring 
twenty-five and thirty-seven cents. Cuttings of the Mission 
grapes can now be had for ten dollars per thousand, a price 
that will not more than pay for preparing them for market; 
while those of the foreign cost from forty to one hundred and 
fifty dollars per thousand. For wine, the foreign grape has an 
equal or still greater advantage. Flavor and fruitiness are not 
less needed there than in fruit to be eaten fresh at the table. 
The lack of fruitiness is the great misfortune of the wing made 
from the Californian grape, and the evil can only be remedied 
by the use of the foreign grape. 
