March  26 
the  fruit.  Then  again,  the 
quantity  of  copper  may,  with¬ 
out  doubt,  be  largely  reduced 
and  that  will  make  assurance 
doubly  sure.” 
“  What  are  your  best  grapes 
for  profit  ?” 
“  Well,  Norton’s  Virginia, 
Ironclad  and  Ives.  The  last 
is  the  most  reliable  all-around  grape  that  we  have,  and 
when  fully  ripe,  is  very  good.  It  has  a  bad  reputation 
in  your  markets,  because  growers  generally  ship  it  as 
soon  as  it  becomes  black,  but  when  it  is  far  from  ripe. 
Norton’s  Virginia  is  grown  only  as  a  wine  grape.” 
“  Can  you  tell  me  of  the  origin  of  the  Ironclad  ?  ” 
“  Oh,  yes.  In  1873,  in  conversation  with  Thomas 
Scott,  then  President  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railway,  I 
was  deploring  the  prevalence  of  the  grape  rot.  Mr. 
Scott  remarked  that  he  believed  his  gardener  had  a 
grape  which  never  rotted.  I  investigated  and  found 
that  the  grape  was  an  old  friend  of  my  family.  It  was  ♦ 
a  seedling,  growing  near  Darby,  Pa.,  and  is  evidently 
a  cross  between  Labrusca  and  Cordifolia.  The  origi¬ 
nal  vine  is  over  100  years  old,  and  my  father,  when  a 
boy,  knew  of  it  and  had  eaten  its  fruit.  I  got  cuttings 
and  propagated  it.  It  seems  to  have  the  ability  to  re¬ 
sist  rot  and  phylloxera  without  any  external  aid.  It  is 
especially  valuable  as  a  wine  grape,  owing  to  its  deep, 
rich  color.  At  the  horticultural  exhibition  in  Wash¬ 
ington  in  1886,  I  exhibited  some  of  the  juice.  Those 
who  saw  it  could  at  first  hardly  believe  that  it  was  not 
artificially  colored,  and  one  member  of  the  convention 
said  it  was  dark  enough  for  ink.  It  was  tried,  and 
worked  so  well  that  the  minutes  of  that  convention 
were  written  in  the  Ironclad  juice.” 
“  Has  it  been  largely  disseminated?” 
“  Quite  generally.  I  have,  by  request,  sent  vines  to 
New  Zealand  and  California,  and  both  wood  and  seeds 
to  Spain.  I  do  not  know  how  largely  nurserymen 
have  disseminated  it  at  home.” 
“On  the  whole,  then,  Mr.  Pearson,  you  are  quite 
satisfied  with  the  outlook  for  grape  culture  ?  ” 
“I  am.  I  believe  that  we  can  now  grow  the  Vini- 
feras  in  the  open  air  at  Vineland,  N.  J.,  and  doubtless 
much  further  north,  by  simply  giving  them  a  little 
winter  protection.  The  difficulty  with  these  grapes 
(the  European  family)  has  been  that  mildew  and  rot, 
not  cold,  rendered  them  useless.  We  can  easily  de¬ 
stroy  these  pests  by  spraying  and  can  thus,  I  believe, 
grow  these  beautiful  grapes.  I  shall  plant  some  Black 
Hamburgs  in  the  spring  in  the  open  air,  and  I  hope 
others  will  give  them  a  trial.  One  of  my  neighbors 
has  succeeded  in  growing  beautiful  clusters  of  one  of 
the  Viniferas  in  the  open  air,  by  carefully  spraying  it, 
and  others  can  do  the  same.” 
Effect  of  Copper  Compounds  on  Soils.  Eig.  104, 
Soil  in  left-hand  box  contained  a  five-per-cent  solution  of  copper  sulphate,  while  the  soil  in  the  right-hand  box 
contained  no  copper. 
very  much  less  than  the  checks.  At  Fig.  104  are  shown 
two  sets  of  tomato  plants  grown  from  the  same  seed 
and  planted  at  the  same  time,  the  only  difference 
being  that  a  five-per-cent  solution  of  copper  sulphate 
was  added  to  the  soil  in  one  case  while  in  the  other 
the  soil  was  not  treated.  A  measurement  of  these  to¬ 
matoes  to-day  shows  that  the  check  plants  have  made 
over  six  times  the  growth  that  the  plants  in  the  cop¬ 
per  sulphate  have  made.” 
The  Interview. 
THE  USE  OF  THE  BORDEAUX  MIXTURE. 
A  Veteran  Experimenter  Talks. 
Col.  A.  W.  Pearson  of  New  Jersey  recently  said  to  a 
R.  N.-Y.  reporter: 
“  I  first  became  interested  in  grape  diseases  in  1874 
or  1875.  My  friend  Dr.  E.  C.  Bid  well  and  myself  each 
procured  a  compound  microscope  and  began  the  study. 
The  first  year  we  spent  in  identifying  the  germ.” 
“  How  did  you  satisfy  yourself  that  you  were 
right  ?  ” 
“  We  made  sure  by  cultivating  the  spore  and  then 
infected  other  grapes  with  the  culture,  producing  the 
specific  disease.  It  was  in  1878  or  1879  that  Dr.  Bid- 
well  discovered  the  winter  form  of  the  black  rot, 
which  has  since  been,  in  his  honor,  named  Lmstadia 
Bidwellii.” 
“  When  did  you  begin  your  spraying  experiments 
with  the  Bordeaux  and  other  mixtures  ?  ” 
“  The  first  work  was  done  on  June  13,  1887,  but  the 
results  were  not  satisfactory.  To  be  more  accurate, 
there  were  no  results.” 
“  What  was  the  trouble  ?” 
“  It  was  too  late  in  the  season  when  we  began  the 
work.  The  next  year  we  began  spraying  when  the 
vines  first  began  to  grow  and  we  kept  it  up  at  intervals 
throughout  the  season.  The  results  were  very  encour¬ 
aging.  Prof.  Scribner  of  the  Tennessee  University, 
then  of  the  Agricultural  Department,  was  with  me  in 
the  latter  part  of  the  season.  We  had  succeeded  in 
killing  the  germs  of  the  rot,  the  next  question  was  to 
decide  as  to  the  effect  of  the  spraying  on  the  grapes.” 
“  How  did  you  settle  that  ?  ” 
“  By  a  very  practical  test.  We  cut  a  large  quantity 
of  them  and  deliberately  ate  all  we  could.  Then  we 
said  our  prayers  and  awaited  results.  There  were  no 
EFFECTS  OF  COPPER  SOLUTIONS  ON  THE  SOIL. 
The  use  of  Paris-green,  the  Bordeaux  mixture  and 
other  compounds  containing  copper  has  increased  so 
rapidly  of  late  that  the  question  has  seriously  arisen  as 
to  the  effect  upon  the  soil  of  such  heavy  doses  of  these 
materials.  It  is  thought  by  many  that  the  continued 
use  of  these  materials  will  result  in  such  an  accumula¬ 
tion  of  compounds  of  copper  in  the  soil  as  to  seriously 
affect  the  vegetation  of  seeds.  It  is  not  strange,  there¬ 
fore,  that  our  experiment  stations  are  conducting  a 
series  of  experiments  to  test  the  effect  of  small  quan¬ 
tities  of  copper  in  the  soil.  Prof.  S.  A.  Beach  of  the 
Geneva  Experiment  Station,  N.  Y.,  sends  us  the  fol¬ 
lowing  account  of  a  series  of  experiments  he  has  under 
way. 
“  Peas,  tomatoes  and  wheat  were  selected  for  the  first 
experiments,  as  they  represented  plants  of  widely  dif¬ 
fering  natural  orders.  The  seeds  were  planted  in 
different  soil  mixtures  containing  two  percent  and  five 
per  cent  by  weight  of  copper  sulphate.  At  the  same 
time  an  equal  number  of  seeds  were  planted  in  soil  ex¬ 
actly  similar  except  that  it  contained  no  copper  sul¬ 
phate,  and  care  was  taken  to  give  all  the  plants  exactly 
similar  conditions  and  treatment.  This  amount  of 
copper  sulphate  in  the  soil  caused  a  marked  difference 
from  the  first  between  the  plants  on  treated  and 
untreated,  or  cheek  soil.  The  difference  was  notice¬ 
able  in  the  per  cent  of  plants  that  germinated,  the 
appearance  of  the  foliage,  the  height  and  the  period 
of  maturity. 
“In  the  two-per-cent  soils  six  per  cent  more  tomato 
seed,  17  per  cent  more  of  p?as  and  17  per  cent  less  of 
wheat  germinated  than  in  the  check  soils.  The  last 
mentioned  was  the  only  instance  in  all  the  experiments 
tried  thus  far  in  which  the  per  cent  of  germinated 
seeds  in  the  copper  soils  did  not  exceed  the  per  cent 
