I will now name a few varieties which have proved to be, or promise to be, the most thrifty and productive whereever grapes can be grown at all the labrusca class:  Black—­Concord, Wilder, Worden, Amenia, Early Canada, Telegraph or Christine, Moore’s Early.  Red-Wyoming, Goethe, Lindley, Beauty, Brighton, Perkins (pale red), and Agawam.  White—­Rebecca, Martha, Alien’s Hybrid, Lady Pocklington, Prentiss, Lady Washington.  These are all fine grapes, and they have succeeded throughout wide areas of country.  Any and all are well worth a trial; but if the grower finds that some of them are weak and diseased in his grounds, I should advise that he root them out and replace them with those which thrive.  The Niagara is highly praised, and may make good all that is claimed for it.

Of the aestivalis class I can recommend the Cynthiana and the Herbemont, or Warren, for the extreme South.  Both of them are black.  There are new varieties of this vigorous species which promise well.

The cordifolia species promises to furnish some fine, hardy, and productive grapes, of which the Amber is an example.  The Elvira, a pale yellow grape, is highly praised by Mr. Hussman.  Although the Bacchus is distinctively a wine grape, I have already said that its flavor, when fully ripe, was agreeable to me.  The only difficulty in growing it is to keep the ground poor, and use the pruning-knife freely.

I have enlarged on this point, for I wish to direct the mind of the reader to the fact that there are many very hardy grapes.  I congratulate those who, with the taste of a connoisseur, have merely to sample until they find just the varieties that suit them, and then to plant these kinds in their genial soil and favored locality.

At the same time I should like to prevent others from worrying along with unsatisfactory varieties, or from reaching the conclusion that they can not grow grapes in their region or garden.  Let them rather admit that they can not raise some kinds, but may others.  If a variety were persistently diseased, feeble, and unproductive under good treatment, I should root it out rather than continue to nurse and coddle it.

When mildew and grape-rot first appear, the evil can often be remedied in part by dusting the vines with sulphur, and continuing the process until the disease is cured, if it ever is.  I have never had occasion to do this, and will not do it.  A variety that often requires such nursing in this favored locality should be discarded.

There is one kind of disease, or feebleness rather, to which we are subject everywhere, and from which few varieties are exempt.  It is the same kind of weakness which would be developed in a fine sound horse if we drove him until he dropped down every time we took him out.  Cultivated vines are so far removed from their natural conditions that they will often bear themselves to death, like a peach-tree.  To permit this is a true instance of avarice overreaching itself; or the evil may result from ignorance or neglect.  Close pruning in autumn and thinning out the crowding clusters soon after they have formed is the remedy.  If a vine had been so enfeebled, I should cut it back rigorously, feed it well, and permit it to bear very little fruit, if any, for a year.