Some men of experience, Mr. George Husmann in particular, are strenuous advocates of summer pruning, or pinching the ends of the young shoots during the summer, and they even advise beginning as soon as four or five leaves have appeared; but this practice is more falked about here than followed. Without waiting for the results of experiments which we have begun, we have great confidence in what is known as the strict Guyot system. This consists in renewing the horizontal arm annually, by cutting away the old arm at the end of the season and bending down into its place a new cane that has been allowed to grow for this purpose from near the base of the vine. The next year's fruit is raised from the fresh, vigorous buds of this new arm, and at the same time a new strong shoot is growing to take the place of the bearing cane the following season. This method has advantages apparent at a glance to the experienced cultivator.

Any system of pruning is better than none. It takes but a year or two for a neglected vine to get beyond the reach of the shears, and to become a tangled mass of half-ripened wood and useless shoots. In this case it is often simpler to cut the vine down and start afresh than to try to bring it into shape by trimming.

Grafting the vine is a matter which still tries the skill and patience of cultivators. Some recommend the spring as the proper time for grafting, and others the month of November. Grafting below the soil is preferred by some, and others succeed best six feet above the surface, but we must say that in both methods failure is the rule. We regret this, for any approach to certainty in this process would be of immense value. In proof we may mention that we knew a small two-bud cutting to be grafted on a vigorous stock in June, and to make from each bud a strong cane ten or twelve feet long the same season. In the case to which we refer the canes were layered the next spring, and the result was that in fifteen months from the time the tiny scion was inserted the experimenter had forty strong, well-rooted layers, worth, as it happened, a dollar apiece. If he had propagated his two buds in the usual way, by heat, he would have had two small vines instead of forty large ones. We cannot help thinking that at some time the

problem of grafting will be solved; and, if it should be, then nurserymen will find it profitable to raise seedling stocks from native seed for delicate growers like the Delaware and Rebecca.

The chief diseases of the vine are mildew and rot, the former, speaking generally, affecting the leaves, and the latter the fruit. With us, cold nights in July and August, after hot, damp weather, are almost sure to bring on mildew. The only varieties in our collection absolutely unaffected by mildew last year were the Salem, Concord, Una, Cottage, and Hartford Prolific. Some varieties suffered badly, losing all their leaves long before frost came. The mildewing of a few leaves on strong vines need cause no anxiety, for its ill effects will be wholly inappreciable. Sulphur has been looked upon as a specific against mildew, and even as a preventive of its attacks. We have tried it for three years, but cannot see that it checks the spread of mildew much, unless very thoroughly applied to the under side of the leaves as soon as the spots appear. A sulphide of potassium is said to be more efficacious than dry sulphur, and may be applied in solution by means of a syringe.

Rot is a more serious matter than mildew. It has ruined the usefulness of the Catawba, and makes certain other grapes an uncertain crop. It affected in Massachusetts last year, though very slightly so far as we observed, the Rogers Nos. 15 and 19, the Concord, and possibly one or two other kinds. It presents itself under various aspects; but, in whatever shape it comes, little is known of its cause, and no means of guarding against it has yet been devised. All that can be recommended is to select varieties for planting of perfect hardiness and vigor, and to discard all others.

Among insects, rose-bugs are sometimes a serious pest. They eat the vine blossoms with the utmost greediness. One vigneron in this State destroyed last year a peck, by measure, of these bugs by hand-picking and burning, no other means of getting rid of them being at all practicable. They exhibit a decided preference for the foliage of the Clinton grape, and will actually forsake all other vines in a large collection for the sake of feeding on the leaves of this variety. No other insects have become troublesome in this part of the country.

It is not many years since a few pounds of poor grapes

It

abundantly supplied the markets of our great cities, that now consume hundreds of tons of choice varieties every season. would be tedious to give here a list of the prices for which grapes for table use have been sold in our markets, but we may say that we have never yet seen good grapes sold at a price which did not well repay the grower.

Discredit has been brought upon grape culture of late by exaggerated statements of the profits it affords. Exceptional. returns in favorable years have been cited as an average, while short crops and failures have been kept out of sight. We have seen vineyards in this State that have borne crops of seven tons to the acre, but it would be unfair to reckon the profit of any vineyard on a basis of more than three and a half tons to the acre.

Grape culture will not suffer when its profits are fairly compared with those of any ordinary farm crops; and such a comparison is, it seems to us, the only way of getting a correct estimate. We can safely reckon that seven hundred Concord vines will produce, on an acre of ground, thirty-five hundred pounds each year. These, if sold for five cents per pound, will give a better return than any field of corn, with less than half the annual outlay for labor and manure than the corn would require. We may add that, while twice five pounds to a well-established vine is only a fair crop, five cents per pound is an extremely low price for grapes offered for sale in decent condition. The lowest wholesale price of Concord grapes in the Boston market last year was twelve cents per pound.

There is a steadily increasing demand for good fruit, and we may even say for fruit of every kind. As the supply increases, the price rises, showing that the supply provokes the demand. The price of strawberries, for example, of which one Boston firm sold twelve thousand boxes in one day last year, is three or four times as great as it was when only a third or a quarter as many strawberries were raised as now. Poor fruit, hastily gathered and carelessly packed, is always abundant and cheap, but it remains to be proved that the public will not prefer to pay the very highest price for the best article. The literature of grape culture in this country is already respectable, and is annually increasing.

Of the books we have named above, Mead's Manual is the most pretentious, and Husmann's is the most useful. Du Breuil's treatise contains precepts and directions wholly unsuited to our vines and climate, and the text and notes of the American edition make together a curious mosaic of contradictory advice. The monthly horticultural journals afford the best index of the interest felt in grape-growing in this country; ' and it often happens that half their reading matter, and a very large proportion of their advertisements, relate to grapes and wine. Nurserymen are not rare who advertise vines by the half-million; and perhaps no better way can be found to get a comprehensive idea of the extent to which grape-growing is carried, and indirectly a notion of the size of the vine-growing area, than to study the advertising columns of the journals devoted to horticulture.

Dr. Grant's address at Canandaigua is a very able and instructive paper, and will well repay a careful study. No man in this country has a clearer conception than the author of this address of the comparative value of different grapes, or of the merits of the wines they produce. The first number of a Western monthly journal, devoted wholly to grapes and wine, has already appeared, and the magazine bids fair to be successful. It is edited by Mr. George Husmann, a man of great enterprise and wide experience, and we welcome its appearance as a pleasant sign of the increasing importance of the grape-growing interest in this country.

Important as is the growing of grapes for use as food, and profitable as it can be shown to be, the cultivation of grapes for wine will always take precedence of it. Little by little, from feeble and uncertain beginnings, wine-making in this country has risen to be a very important element of the national prosperity. It promises to take rank by the side of wool-growing, cotton-raising, and the production of breadstuffs.

It used to be the fashion, and may be customary even now among those who can indulge themselves in the choicest products of European vineyards, to sneer at wines of domestic growth; but as the question, "Who reads an American book?" is no longer asked in derision, so the query," Who drinks American wines?" is becoming a thing of the past. To say nothing

of the Californian vineyards, in which mainly vines of European origin are grown, we can reckon at once at least fifteen kinds of grapes, wines made from which, and presumably pure, are now offered for sale in quantity. Other varieties, such as the Iona and some seedlings not yet disseminated, have produced wine of the highest quality, but not yet in quantity sufficient to become an article of trade.

There is of course much difference of opinion as to the comparative value of the various wines produced east of the Rocky Mountains, and we are perhaps justified in noticing some of these varieties in detail.

Although compelled at once to struggle against the attacks of disease and to compete with newer varieties, the Catawba grape still furnishes a very considerable proportion of our native wine. It is unfair to speak ill of the bridge that has carried us safely over from the days of ignorance in winemaking to the present enlightened period, but we must say that the Catawba grape has seen its best days. We should be of the same opinion even if it were not affected by disease, for newer and better kinds stand ready to take its place. Connoisseurs tell us that the wine of the Catawba is neither full nor rich enough, and that it is apt to be too sour. It can never give us what we need so much, a delicate hock wine. We have tasted many samples of Concord wine. Some were of incredible nastiness, while others, made from perfectly ripe grapes with the addition of sugar, were comparatively palatable, although by no means of great merit. The pure juice gives a claret; the sugared, as we have tasted it, a kind of nondescript, possibly to be classed as a sherry. The peculiar aroma or flavor of the wild grape-called, for want of a more descriptive term, "foxiness" has been inherited in a modified degree by its descendants, and is unpleasantly perceptible in the Concord wine. We know, however, that in Florida and Missouri the Concord grape attains a degree of excellence it never reaches here, and that its wine is improved in a corresponding degree. The Clinton grape, the juice of which contains a good percentage of sugar, produces a strong, full, red wine, of considerable body but harsh and unpleasant. We may call such samples as we have tasted a rough claret, and we hardly think that this