On one occasion I saw three or four alight on a Diana vine, and in five minutes they had spoiled a dozen clusters.  If they would only take a bunch and eat it up clean, one would readily share with them, for there would be enough for all; but the dainty little epicures puncture an indefinite number of berries, merely taking a sip from each.  Then the wasps and bees come along and finish the clusters.  The cardinal, cat-bird, and our unrivalled songster the wood-thrush, all help themselves in the same wasteful fashion.  One can’t shoot wood-thrushes.  We should almost as soon think of killing off our Nilssons, Nevadas, and Carys.  The only thing to do is to protect the clusters; and this can be accomplished in several ways.  The most expeditious and satisfactory method is to cover the vines of early grapes with cheap mosquito netting.  Another method is to make little bags of this netting and inclose each cluster.  Last fall, two of my children tied up many hundreds of clusters in little paper bags, which can be procured at wholesale for a trifling sum.  The two lower corners of the paper bags should be clipped off to permit the rain to pass freely through them.  Clusters ripen better, last longer on the vine, and acquire a more exquisite bloom and flavor in this retirement than if exposed to light as well as to birds and wasps.  Not the fruit but the foliage of the grape-vine needs the sun.

Few of the early grapes will keep long after being taken from the vine; but some of the later ones can be preserved well into the winter by putting them in small boxes and storing them where the temperature is cool, even, and dry.  Some of the wine-grapes, like Norton’s Virginia, will keep under these conditions almost like winter apples.  One October day I took a stone pot of the largest size and put in first a layer of Isabella grapes, then a double thickness of straw paper, then alternate layers of grapes and paper, until the pot was full.  A cloth was next pasted over the stone cover, so as to make the pot water-tight.  The pot was then buried on a dry knoll below the reach of frost, and dug up again on New Year’s Day.  The grapes looked and tasted as if they had just been picked from the vine.

For the mysteries of hybridizing and raising new seedlings, grafting, hot-house and cold grapery culture, the reader must look in more extended works than this, and to writers who have had experience in these matters.

We shall next consider three fruits which upon the Home Acre may be regarded as forming a natural group-peaches, plums, and raspberries, if any one expresses surprise that the last-named fruit should be given this relationship, I have merely to reply that the raspberry thrives in the partial shade produced by such small trees as the peach and plum.  Where there is need of economy of space it is well to take advantage of this fact, for but few products of the garden give any satisfaction when contending with roots below and shade above.