AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
359 
In the Pomological gossip, the Black Bar- 
barossa grape is said to be proved a most 
valuable variety. A bunch weighing four 
• pounds has been exhibited in London. It is 
one of the latest keeping grapes. 
The Omar Pacha pear is a new variety, 
introduced by Mr. Leroy, of Angers, the 
present year. It first fruited in 1853. It is 
a first-rate fruit, of fair size, and ripens at 
the end of August and beginning of Septem¬ 
ber. The Beurre Clairgeau is noticed, and 
its excellence vindicated by numerous au¬ 
thorities from across the waters. M. Jonghe, 
the emminent Belgian pomologist, says that 
from five to twenty years is the period, from 
the first production of a new fruit, before a 
definite opinion can be given of the real 
merits of the variety. This should never 
be forgotten by any one who is at all inter¬ 
ested in new varieties, and if his advice is 
followed, it will put an end to the practice 
of grafting over such trees as sdon as they 
have borne one crop. 
Wilson Flagg gives us the first number of 
his studies in the field and forest. If the 
following are of the same type with the 
present, we shall be happy to share his 
pleasures in his winter rambles. The arti¬ 
cle on sheltered garden seats gives us a dia¬ 
gram, and shows how to make them orna¬ 
mental, and at small expense. In the month¬ 
ly gossip it is stated that many trees, per¬ 
fectly hardy in England, are not able to en¬ 
dure our winters. On the other hand, our 
summers are so much brighter, longer, and 
warmer than those of England, that some of 
our indigenous plants can only be cultivated 
in a greenhouse. The Sabbatia stellaris, 
common in all our wet meadows, from New 
Jersey to Massachusetts, was exhibited 
among the varieties of the season last year, 
at the Cheswick show. There are many 
very beautiful flowers in our woods and 
swamps not yet domesticated. Here is a 
rich field open to our florists, that might 
yield gems, as fair as any thing brought 
from the distant shores of China and Japan. 
There is a very appropriate obituary of 
the late Mr. Thomas Hogg, so long and so 
pleasantly known to our citizens. He came 
among us when plants, and a taste for them, 
were equally rare. By his example and 
conversation he encouraged both. His pat¬ 
rons always received with their plants ample 
instructions for their care ; and he was par¬ 
ticularly anxious to encourage the amateur, 
by imparting to him whatever knowledge he 
possessed himself. He was the first in New- 
York to import novelties from Europe, and 
earned the reputation of having one of the 
best general collections of plants in the Uni¬ 
ted States. At different times he procured 
from South America fine collections of rare 
plants, chiefly Orchidaea, of which he sent 
many beautiful specimens to Europe. In 
short, he took a deep interest in everything 
which could exalt his profession and extend 
a love for the beautiful objects of his care. 
He was amiable in all the relations of life, 
a useful citizen and an honor to his profes¬ 
sion. We are happy to add our testimony to 
this just tribute to one who so loved and 
honored his calling, and whose name has so 
long been associated with the floriculture of 
our city and vicinity. 
THE HYBRIDIZATION OF GRAPES 
The production of new varieties of fruit, by 
fertilizing one with the pollen of another, is 
a process so comparatively recent that we 
have no term to express it; and the title of 
our article is not authorized by Webster as 
good English. There is need however, of 
the terms hybridize, hybridizing, and hybrid¬ 
ization, in the vocabulary of horticulturists, 
to describe a process which is every year 
gaining favor with fruit growers, and which 
has already resulted in some of the choicest 
fruits upon our catalogues. The knowledge 
of this process gives to the pomologist almost 
a creative power. He can avail himself of 
certain laws, which God has stamped upon 
the constitution of plants, to originate new 
varieties with certain peculiar qualities as 
permanent as the varieties from which they 
are deduced. 
The production of new varieties of grapes 
from the seeds alone, is a very uncertain 
process, not one in a hundred proving to be 
an improvement upon its parent. There is 
no inducement for pomologists to look to 
this source longer for improvement. Mr. 
Bull, of Concord, after years of patient tod, 
and the production of any quantity of vines 
fit only for fuel, has only gained one new 
grape that proves valuable, and that he pre¬ 
sumes to be a hybrid. 
As we are to look to hybridization, mainly, 
for our future improvements in this delicious 
fruit, it is worth our while to study the pro¬ 
cess very carefully. We find in the last re¬ 
port of the Massachusetts Horticultural So¬ 
ciety, a detailed account of the mode bj 
which J. F. Allen of Salem, secured his new 
hybrids. For the parent vine he took the 
Isabella, that being the most hardy stock, 
and cultivated farther north than any othei 
good grape. It was planted in a vinery de¬ 
voted to peaches and nectarines, so that il 
should not be exposed to any chance fertili¬ 
zation, when in flower. To be sure thai 
bees or no external cause could effect the 
impregnation, and thus defeat his efforts, the 
vine was forced in January, and blossomeo 
before vegetation commenced in the open 
air. When the embryo bunch approached the 
time of blossoming, he selected a few of the 
strongest and cut away all the other bunches 
in the vicinity. The buds were thinned out 
before they opened, leaving only a fourth 
part for impregnation. As they expanded, 
they w T ere closely watched, and the anthers 
cut away at once with sharp sissors. With 
a soft brush the pollen from the European 
kinds was then applied. This was collected 
from a forcing house, and was mixed togethei 
in a box, having been taken from Chasselas. 
Black Prince, and Black Hamburg; when 
the impregnation took effect, the embryo 
swelled at once ; when otherwise it remained 
as it was. Thus he was assured that any 
seed obtained must produce a hybrid vine. 
When the fruit ripened, the seed was col¬ 
lected and planted in a soil where no other 
grape seed could have been sown accident¬ 
ally. The young vines were kept constantly 
under his own care. The seedlings after 
they had become somewhat grown were ex¬ 
posed to the winter, and all the tender ones 
killed out, leaving about twenty that prove 
hardy. The “ Allen’s Hybrid,” which has 
been fruited, is white, though the parent is 
black ; a fact that is paralelled in Mr. Long- 
worth’s experiments, who has produced 
white seedlings both from natives and from 
the Catawba. 
The amateur will see in this process of 
Mr. Allen, that it is no holiday business to 
produce hybrid grapes. There must be a 
great deal of painstaking and expense, and 
the closest personal attention, in order to 
originate a variety whose parentage he can 
certify. To gentlemen of wealth and intel¬ 
ligence who have a taste for fine fruits, and 
leisure to devote to their cultivation, this pro¬ 
cess of hybridizing must be very fascinating. 
We rejoice to see a field so promising of 
grand results fairly entered by our pomolo¬ 
gists. Rich harvests, we doubt not, are soon 
to be gathered here, and American fruit 
growers will here win their proudest laurels ; 
for after centuries of vine culture, it is said 
that it has hardly occured to the vine-dress¬ 
ers of Europe that new varieties could be 
originated by this process. We trust the 
day is not distant when we of the frigid 
north may sit under our own vine—and a 
better than our own fig-tree. 
AMMABROMA, OR SAND FOOD OF SONORA. 
Washington, Feb. 5, 1655. 
I have just seen an interesting drawing of 
a very remarkable plant discovered by A. B. 
Gray, Esq., in his recent explorations across 
the Continent for the purpose of ascertain¬ 
ing the practicability of constructing a rail¬ 
way to the Pacific. It is a parasitic plant, a 
large and fleshy root; a parasite, which Pro¬ 
fessor Torry, of New-York, to whom Mr. 
Gray submitted it for examination, finds to 
constitute “ a new genus of the small group 
or family represented by the little known 
and anomalous Corallophrjllum of Ivunth and 
the Pholisma of Nutall; in the floral struc¬ 
ture and the scales, more like the latter, 
from which it is distinguished by its wooly, 
plumose calyx, and its singular cyathiform 
inflorescence.” It was found in abundance 
through a range of naked sand hills skirting 
Adair Bay ” near the head of the Gulf of 
California, furnishing an isolated band of 
Papigo Indians with an important article of 
food. The fresh plant is cooked by roasting 
upon the hot coals, and resembles the sweet 
potato in taste, having much saccharine mat¬ 
ter about it. It is likewise dried and mixed 
with less palatable kinds of food, such as 
musquit, beans, &c. It is represented to be 
a very delicious vegetable, and could it be 
transplanted, Mr. Gray believes that it would 
constitute an important acquisition to the 
table, probably not second in demand to the 
sweet potato or asparagas. I understand, 
however, that Professor Torrey thinks it 
can not be grown elsewhere, unless the root 
or shrub, which is entirely under ground, 
&c., to which it attaches itself, can be also 
transplanted. Professor Torrey is now pre¬ 
paring for Mr. Gray a botanical description 
of this interesting plant, under the name of 
“ Ammabroma Sunorce ” which will signify 
Sand Food of Sonora. 
Cot. of the Journal of Commerce 
As sure as we are in love, we pardon, more 
faults in love than in friendship. 
