148 



Black Alicante has borne fairly well, producing nice bunches of very 

 fine dark coloured berries of fairly good flavour, but the thinning is the 

 bugbear with this variety. 



Gros Colmar that most showy of all graphs (although it never is as 

 good as it looks) has proved a regular fraud. It puts out the most 

 promising looking bunches, which grow and swell up in the finest style 

 imaginable, until just as it commences to colour, the berries begin to 

 crack and fall off, until, by the time they are ripe, often only six or 

 eight berries will be left hanging oa a bunch which had it ripened 

 properly would have weighed two or three pounds. We have a great 

 many more varieties under trial at Hope amounting to over 30 in all, 

 in these we hope to ba able to find a variety suited to Jamaica but of 

 ourse we do not expect to be able to find one which will grow without 

 some trouble. I hardly think we are likely to find a white grape better 

 suited to Jamaica than the Muscat, but I do trust we shall find a good 

 black of easier culture thad any of those tried With reference to the 

 grapas which I have seen growing in Manchester and St. Elizabeth ; 

 the distressful savannahs at the back of Alligator Pond, and on to Lititz 

 seem to be most admirably adapted for grape growing. A black grape 

 which I do not recognise, growing into magnificent vines in an incredi- 

 bly short space of time, and producing bunches up to six pounds in 

 weight, I did not see a really properly ripened bunch as none had been 

 thinned, and so only about half the grapes were eatable, but this of 

 eourse could be easily remedied especially as the grape mentioned really 

 does not set so very many more berries than could be ripaned. The 

 berries in some casjs were really magniticant baing large and of a fine 

 black colour. The soil oa the Savannahs is a curious red sandy loam, 

 which on the surface gets as dry as ashes, but never hard, and even 

 after a prolonged drought is quite moist a few inches below the surface. 

 In the whole of the Savannah country which I went, over I did not see a 

 single white grape, but in the Bluefields district of Westmoreland 

 Muscats grow and ripen splendidly, and nearly all the year round, but 

 most of the black grapes do not thrive, this part of the island being 

 much too wet. 



