GRAPES.
The oldest cultivated fruit is the grape, a plant related to the Virginia creeper. Six thousand years it has furnished the human race with food and drink. In the old countries, wine comes first among the important products of "the vine." To us, grapes are important first as food. We grow them to cat fresh, out of hand, as a table dessert, and to cook. Dried, they are a valuable food called raisins and dried currants. Bottling the unfermented juice is a great industry in the United States. \Vine comes last, for, though California grows the wine grapes of Europe, and makes wine, Americans are not wine-drinkers, to any great degree, and Europe counts the wines of other countries inferior to those of her southern coun tries, where wines have been the most important product for centuries.
It was natural that the early settlers of the Atlantic coast should bring the grapevines of Europe with them, and try to raise vineyards and make wine. They failed, and they could not guess why. So they turned their attention to the native grapes, which grew in considerable abundance and variety in different regions. By selection, and tillage, some of the best grape varieties grown to day have been developed from the wild, native kinds.
The Concord, one of the richest-flavored, and most popular of eastern grapes, was discovered as a chance seedling on his grounds by Ephriam Bull, a resident of Concord, Massachusetts, in 1843. He recognized the merit of the fruit, and propa gated this "sport" by cuttings. Now its range is extensive, and the fruit is shipped even to Cali fornia, whose markets are loaded with the richest dessert grapes, of the sorts that Europeans grow under glass.
The Concord is the parent of the Worden, Moore's Early, and a number of other fine, but less famous varieties. But the original vine still flourishes where it was discovered seventy-five years ago.
The Catawba, another fine grape, was found wild in the North Carolina woods a year earlier than Ephriam Bull's notable discovery in New England. It has given rise to another famous seedling, the Diana, which is more popular than its illustrious parent.
In the American woods nearly two dozen dis tinct species of grape have been found. In Europe, southern Asia and North Africa native species have given, in the course of thousands of years of culture, over a thousand distinct cultural varieties. But the one species that is parent of the wine grapes is Fitis vinifera. No other country compares with American in wealth of species of native grapes.
The soft, juicy native grapes contrast distinctly with the thick-meated grapes of Europe. These are in recent years quite common in the markets of all cities, being grown and shipped in refrigerator cars from California vineyards. The Flame Tokays, Cornichons, Mission, and Muscats are among these well-known and deservedly popular fruits.
Some of the finest varieties of cultivated grapes have been developed from crosses of native American species with the European vine. New kinds have been thus produced outright. The game of making hybrids is played by carrying the pollen of one species to the pistils of another, and preventing self-pollenation. Then we plant the seed set as a result of this hand-work at crossing. It succeeds best with species that do not grow alongside of each other, naturally. The wine grape and the American fox grape have produced some of the most successful of these artificial crosses; and the crossing of a hybrid with a na tive has produced still better varieties. Some of the good varieties are believed to be natural hy brids, crosses produced by the agency of insects or the wind, instead of the voluntary effort of experimenting horticulturists.
The grape phylloxera is a plant louse that feeds upon the roots of the vines, causing the plant to die. It was the cause of death to the European vines first brought over in colonial times. Intro duced into Europe, it swept the vineyards away, and ruined the wine industry. No grape-growing country has escaped a visitation of this plague of the vine.