I was pleased to note your request in April number for your readers in Oregon and Washington, and even in British Columbia, to report for your columns any wild grapes found in those regions.

Please allow me to extend the invitation to those living anywhere on the great plateau between the true Rocky Mountains and the Cascade and Sierra Nevada Mountains, north of Arizona. So far, after considerably inquiry and correspondence, I have been unable to learn of native grapes in that vast region, although I have samples from near Salt Lake called "wild grapes," but which seem the offspring of something like the Clinton, and probably introduced by immigrants from the East. Various species of grapes, including some foreign, do finely when planted in protected places near Salt Lake, and I see no cause why native species, such as V. riparia, should not exist there in abundance in the valleys and on protected hillsides. There is a long belt of rich cretaceous and tertiary formation good for grapes stretching from south of Salt Lake northward to the Arctic ocean, and which has a less rigorous climate than that of Manitoba anywhere in it from 550 in British Columbia southward. If it proves true that no wild species of grape exist here, then I should conclude that the uplift of the plateau with its mountain barriers on either side took place before the introduction by natural causes of grapes into North America, and that the mountain barriers have prevented their spread to the present time into this great mountain valley.

I am anxious to have information concerning and samples of native grapes, if there are any, in this isolated region. I have samples of Vitis Californica, from Josephine county, Oregon, on the Illinois River, and doubt-less it exists on other tributaries as well as the main Rogue River. I also have specimens from the Upper Sacramento river, in northern California, as well as from San Diego county, in southern California, showing considerable variation from each other. So far, after considerable inquiry, have learned of no wild grapes north of the Rogue river, Oregon, although sufficiently mild as far north as Sitka to grow the Riparia. Have recently received cuttings of V. riparia from Mouse river and Turtle Mountains, in the territories of Saskatchewann and Manitoba, which had passed a temperature of between 55° and 60° below zero unscathed.

It is by learning the natural habitats and characteristics of the different species of grapes, or other fruits, that we become enabled, possibly, by hybridizing and selecting to get varieties worthy of cultivation to suit every possible selection.

Denison, Texas.