Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/346

342 from this grape is made a very good sweet or dry wine, the latter entering into a blend for nearly all of the champagne produced in eastern America. The vines, too, are vigorous, hardy and productive. The characters of Catawba are readily transmissible and it has many purebred or hybrid offspring which more or less resemble it.

The second commercial grape of importance in American viticulture is the Concord, which came from the seed of a wild grape planted in the fall of 1843 by Ephraim W. Bull, of Concord, Massachusetts. The new variety was disseminated in the spring of 1854, and from the time of its introduction the spread of the culture of this grape was phenomenal. By 1860 it was the leading grape in America and so remains. It furnishes, with the varieties that have sprung from it, seventy-five per cent, of the grapes grown in eastern America. The characters which distinguish it are: adaptability to various soils, fruitfulness, hardiness, resistance to diseases and insects, certainty of maturity and attractive appearance. It is produced so cheaply that no other grape can compete with it in the markets. It is, as Horace Greeley well denominated it in awarding it the Greeley prize for the best American grape, "the grape for the millions."

Long before the northern fox grapes had attained prominence in the vineyards of the north, the Scuppernong had been partially domesticated in the south. It is a variety of Vitis rotundifolia, a species which runs riot from the Potomac to the Gulf, thriving in many diverse soils, but growing only in the southern climate and preferring the seacoast. The Scuppernong has been cultivated somewhat for its fruit or as an ornamental from the earliest colonial times. It is certain that wine was made from this species by the English settlers at Jamestown. Vines of it are now to be found on arbors, in gardens, or half wild on fences in nearly every farm in the South Atlantic States. That the rotundifolia grapes have not more generally been brought under cultivation is due to the bountifulness of the wild vines, which has obviated the necessity of domesticating them. The fruit of its varieties, to a palate unaccustomed to them, is not very acceptable, having a musky flavor and odor and a sweet, juicy pulp, which is lacking in sprightliness. Many, however, acquire a taste for these grapes and find them pleasant eating. The wines from Vitis rotundifolia partake too much of the muskiness of the fruit unless blended with those of other species. The great defect of this grape is that the berries part from the pedicels as they ripen and perfect bunches of grapes can not be had—in fact, the crop is often harvested by shaking the vines so that the berries drop on sheets beneath. Despite these defects a dozen or more varieties of rotundifolias are now under general cultivation in the cotton belt and interest in their domestication is increasing.

The south has another grape which, while not so early brought under domestication or now so generally grown, has greater horticultural