Vol. XXXIX. No. 18 .) 
Whole No. 1579. j 
NEW YORK, MAY 1, 1880 . 
j Price Five Cents. 
f $2.00 Pee Year. 
[Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1880, by the Rural New-Yorker, In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.] 
r ■ ——---:----—-- 
fintprlr, 
THE VERGENNE8 GRAPE. 
GEN. WM, H. NOBLE, BRIDGEPORT, CONN. 
The rapid advance of the American Grape to 
varieties of great merit is one of the wonders 
of pomology. Wherever the right method of 
dealing with its problem of development is 
reached, success attends. From each gain in 
better knowledge of its solution we may hope 
for higher excellence. It has taken the life of 
man to make the wine grape of the Eastern 
Hemisphere the joy of the table and the wine 
press; but trial with our varieties within the 
half of one of these centuries, offers a luscious 
choice for viand or vintage. Even after this 
brief effort, many prefer our own imperfect 
fruits of the vine to the best foreign grapes. 
Some seem to think a wine can now be made of 
its fruitage in delicacy of flavor and age-ripen¬ 
ing excellence rivaling the best products of the 
European vintage. 
I have rejoiced with pride over the many new 
Grapes which the Rural New-Yorker has 
recently so gracefully noticed. I offer to its 
readers another which I think the peer of 
any native seedling. Its portrait, which I send, 
is tar short of that large-bunched excellence 
which Its best specimens warrant. It Is the 
Vergennes Grape. Its name comes from that 
of the town in Vermont, in one of whose gar¬ 
dens it first grew and bore. 
It is a Labusca and claims all the hardiness, 
and resistance to the ails and pests of the Grape, 
which belong to that family. The vine is won¬ 
derfully vigorous. When one year old, it makes 
stout growths of five or six feet. Vines of two 
years stretch out to 12 and 15 feet; then it 
ripens all its wood, and matures it, as it grows, 
Into sound, rich, brownish-olive, short-jointed 
vines, ripened to the very tips of its late fall 
shoots. It leaves no long stretch of green 
tendrils to get ripe, if the Beason Is long enough, 
or to be killed by the frost, if short. It is thus 
proof against the dead wood which mars so 
many of oar vines, whose frozen sap so hurts 
the rest of the wood. Iu short, it is an extra¬ 
hardy, Bhort- join ted, fast-growing vine. 
I send you two small bunches of the grapes, 
not as specimens of its best estate, but to prove 
its excellence and long-keeping quality. The 
specimens have been kept loosely, in a dry 
cellar, without any extra care. With anything 
like the pains which many devote to their 
grape crop, I think this grape in quality and 
quantity would keep its place on our table 
beside the apple; certainly with the last of 
the long-keeping pears. As you see it now, in 
the bunches sent you, so it has stood for several 
years, just shrank a little from its full con¬ 
tour, and without any nice care or help, kept 
on till thus late. Its shrinkage has uotbing of 
thut wilting and llabby texture, which besets 
so rnauy fine grapes, like the Concord and Isa¬ 
bella, and even the Catawba and Diana, after 
a long tarry iu the fruit room. Auother ex¬ 
cellence of this grape la its early maturity; the 
grapes seut you were picked early In Septem¬ 
ber, at Vergennes, Vermont. They are of a lot 
that have been picked over and eaten from, ever 
siuee they arrived at this place. The Vergen¬ 
nes ripens all its bunches evenly ; no green 
grapes, or parts of bunches are seen iu its fruit¬ 
age, as in some other varieties of excellence. 
It is not subject to mildew, and therefore hold¬ 
ing its leaf, matures its fruit and wood. All 
its products are ripe for the harvest together. 
When ripe, the Vergennes glories in a rich 
bloom. I have never seen a grape that iu tinge, 
at its maturity, so filled the eye with a sense 
and promise of a luscious fruit. This bloom 
it holds, like a tinted coating, till it shrinks 
to a raisin. 
The Vergennes boasts another quality long 
sought in our American grapes—an absence of 
what we call pulp and core. In this regard it Is 
more like the Enropean grape. It is a meaty 
grape, tender in flesh clear through. The 
fitness of the Vergennes for wine has been 
thoroughly tested. It makes a light-tinted, 
delicate liquor, with a rich and pleasant bou¬ 
quet. I think it destined, in this quality, to 
excel any American grape. I have never seen 
any old wine made from it; it is too new a 
grape to have raised crops large enough to 
define and perfect the quality of its wine by age. 
In short, for hardiness, vigor of growth, large 
bounteous fruitage, a luselous fruit of the 
richest tint of blended pink and purple bloom, 
for its yield of wine with the must delicate 
aroma, for its early maturity of wood, and 
fruit, for its long-keeping quality, lasting in 
excellence Deside the apples on our tables, I 
think this the equal of any American Grape 
yet grown. I say this with great tenderness 
towards all its native rivals. 
Jfara Copies. 
HURTFULNESS OF CHLORIDES ON THE 
TOBACCO CROP. 
PROFESSOR F. H. STORER. 
It has been known these 20 years that to¬ 
bacco which contains an unusually large pro- 
THE VERGENNES 
portion of chlorine is apt to burn badly ; and 
it has gradually become plain that fertilizers 
rich In chlorine, such as common salt and mu¬ 
riate of potash, should not be used for this par¬ 
ticular crop, because they increase the amount 
of chlorine in the tobacco leaf and so injure its 
quality. 
Iu reporting some new experiments, which 
go to show how Important it is for the tobacco- 
grower to avoid manures that contain chlorides, 
Adolph Mayer urges that not only should 
muriate of potash Le avoided, and in general, 
all the ordinary Stassfnrt potash-salts of com¬ 
merce, since they invariably contain a larger 
or smaller proportion of the chlorides of potas¬ 
sium and sodium, but that there is a choice 
among animal excrements, even. He explains 
that night-soil,*, e. dung and urine together, such 
as is obtained from tight cess-pools, contains 
so considerable % proportion of chlorides that 
the quality of tobacco may readily be injured 
by it. In this connection he alludes to the fact 
of observation that the excessive use of this 
kind of manure has injured the reputation of 
the tobacco grown in some parts of the Palatin¬ 
ate, and he considers it proved that the large 
amount of chlorine in this tabacco is, to say the 
least, one cause of Us inferiority. So, too, the 
manure obtained by folding sheep (dung and 
urine together) contains more chlorides than 
the dung of neat stock; and, in general, the 
tobacco-grower should take care not to let too 
much chlorine get into the manure he means 
to use, either by allowing liis stock to eat an 
excess of salt or in any other way. Where 
commercial fertilizers are used there ought not 
to be any difficulty in choosing those which 
GRAPE.—Fig. 132. 
are wholly free from chlorine—a fact easily 
proved by chemical analysis and to be vouched 
for by the vendor. Pure sulphate of potash, 
though somewhat more costly than the ordin¬ 
ary run of potassic fertilizers, can be bought 
at a price which cannot be deemed high; and, as 
Mayer says, even saltpeter (nitrate of potash) 
though sold at a high price as compared with 
the other potash salts, may well be used to fer¬ 
tilize tobacco, in view of the high price which 
this crop commands when of good quality. 
This conclusion had already been reached here 
in America; some of our most successful far¬ 
mers being accustomed to use nitrate of potash 
upon tobacco, in precisely the sense of Mayer’s 
suggestion. It might, perhaps be more eco¬ 
nomical to use a mixture of sulphate of potash 
and of nitrate of soda, to replace the nitrate of 
potash, were it not for the fact that, as now 
sold, most samples of nitrate of soda are more 
or less contaminated with common salt. Prob¬ 
ably, the best practice of all would be to use 
the pure sulphate as the chief source of the 
potash needed by the crop, and to reinforce it 
with some nitrate of potash, as a means of sup- 
plying part of the necessary nitrogenous plant- 
food- In buying phosphntic fertilizers, such 
as bone meal; or those containing both phos¬ 
phates and nitrogen, such as fish-scrap or flesh- 
meal, It would be well for the tobacco-grower 
to choose samples which have not been salted 
for the sake of preserving them. 
It is to be understood, of course, that the 
presence of chlorides is not the only cause of 
tobaccos bnrning badly. Samples of tobacco 
well-nigh free from chlorides are sometimes 
found not to burn well. It is held, indeed, by 
some manufacturers that the combustibility of 
tobacco, as well as some of its other qualities, 
may be influenced to a considerable extent by 
processes of sweating and fermenting to which 
the leaves are subjected after the harvest. But 
it seems to have been well made out not only 
that chlorides have a very important influence 
apon the burning of tobacco, but that the 
grower may control the combustibility of his 
crop more readily by paying proper attention 
to the exclusion of chlorides from the fertilizers 
which he employs than in any other way. 
It may here be said that in the old experi¬ 
ments on the combustibility of tobacco it ap¬ 
peared, in general, that tobacco leaves burn 
well when they contain au abundance of potash 
in combination with the organic acids natural 
to the plant, and that they bum badly when 
they contain chlorides or an inadequate supply 
of the potash salts aforesaid. In the process of 
combustion, the organic acids in the tobacco 
decompose readily at comparatively low tem¬ 
peratures and in case they are iu combination 
with potash one result of the decompo¬ 
sition is the formation ot carbonate of pot¬ 
ash, which remains in the ashes. It has 
has beeu found, indeed, that the proportion of 
carbonate of potash that can be dissolved on t 
by water from the ashes of different samples of 
tobacco, affords a tolerably good criterion of 
the relative combustibility of the several 
samples. Little or no carbonate of potash can 
be dissolved from the ashes of those tobaccos 
which will not bum. The explanation of the 
matter seems to be that when exposed to heat 
high enough to calcine and decompose them, 
these organic salts of potash swell-up and dis¬ 
tend in such wise that the tobacco immediately 
in contact with them is puffed out and con¬ 
verted into finely divided charcoal which, by 
the mere act of distention, is brought into more 
intimate contact with the air than it would have 
been otherwise. So that its combustion is 
facilitated. 
Iu like manner, tobacco which contains 
nitrate of potash burns readily, as would natu¬ 
rally have been expected, and it has beeu urged 
by some writers that the nitrate is more im¬ 
portant iu this sense than the organic potash 
salts. But this idea seems not to have been 
substantiated;; ana It has beeu noticed that too 
large a proportion of the nitrate is injurious in 
that it causes cigars to bum more freely and 
rapidly than is desirable. 
The presence of chlorides in the tobacco may, 
perhaps, tend to lessen the proportion of the 
desirable organic acids; or it may be that the 
