HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 105 



characters which are taken as distinctive, may appear too slight to 

 warrant us in separating as distinct species what at first sight might 

 appear to be mere varieties. But setting aside the shape and ap- 

 pearance of the leaves, the nature of the fruit and the method of its 

 growth, in most cases, furnish a good criterion for distinguishing 

 closely allied species from each other, which might in vain be sought 

 for elsewhere. 



Some years ago, when there existed a mania for the cultivation of 

 the vine, there was much written about our native grapes, which 

 only tended to involve in obscurity a rather plain and easily devel- 

 oped subject. Men unacquainted with botany, gardeners and others, 

 remarkable only for their ignorance, folly and bad faith, gave names 

 to various kinds of grapes, and frequently made a dozen species out 

 of one. These names, barbarous and unmeaning as they are, were 

 never bestowed on the same variety by any two writers ; they saw 

 differences where none existed, and endeavored to account for them 

 by supposing impossibilities. Thus, a variety of V. labrusca, which 

 has been called the Isabella and Catawba grape, and received seve- 

 ral other as ridiculous appellations, has been considered as a hybrid 

 between a European and one of our native species. This variety 

 has always been said to have been first found in South Carolina, a 

 country where the V. vinifera had at that time seldom or never been 

 cultivated, and where it by no means flourishes, and where likewise 

 the labrusca is not found. Although among some families of plants 

 hybrids occur naturally or may be found artificially, yet it is diffi- 

 cult to understand how this ever can be the case in the genus Vitis. 

 In forming a hybrid it is necessary to emasculate the flower which 

 we wish to produce fruit, and to impregnate its pistil with the pollen 

 of some other species; this is impossible in the present instance, on 

 account of the minuteness of the flower and the parts of fructifica- 

 tion. If the hybrid be supposed to be formed naturally, how could 

 the anther dust of a cultivated plant be carried in a sufficient quan- 

 tity from a garden to produce any effect in the thick woocfs of the 

 SDuthern States ? 



Botanists have hitherto been able to detect but few species of Vi- 

 tis in the United States. Michaux, Elliot and others, reckon but four 

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