The article in the January number of the Horticulturist should have been headed Grape-Vine Swindle. There is no fraud in the grape itself, although there has been in the sale of the vines, including both the quality of the vines and the wonderful fruits which they were promised to bear. So often have I been deceived, that I would hardly accept as a gift, with a pledge to cultivate, the most praised and highest-priced grape extant.

-I like the idea suggested by Al Fresco, that amateurs should publish their experience, and I propose that they should also give their names and locality. The grape interest is of too great value to be crushed out anonymously.

During twelve years I have cultivated some sixty varieties of grapevines with great care. About fifty of these have been dug up and discarded as worthless ; some would not ripen the fruit; some had the rot; others the mildew; many were too tender, and never made ripe wood. Among these last were a large number from the Patent Office, most of them, as I supposed, having a Southern origin, and not suited to a Northern climate.

Among the old varieties which never failed, year by year, never mildewed, never rotted, Hartford stands at the head of the list. I know that half a dozen years since I was ridiculed for entertaining such an idea; but it is orthodox now to believe it. When cultivators could introduce some more worthless variety by sneering at the Hartford, they did so. You will see that I drop the word Prolific - all our cultivated grapes bear too much. I do not know one of them that is not improved in quality by taking off, in June, immediately after flowering, three fourths of the fruit. My rule is, leave only one bunch upon a shoot. With this treatment, and a disuse of the pernicious practice of summer pruning, which has been adopted so extensively, we can still have healthy vines and plenty of fruit.

The Hartford is an early ripener, perfects and ripens its wood for another year's fruit-bearing, and needs no protection in winter on the Hudson, where the degree of cold is often 15° below zero.

Here, then, is a native grape that is not a swindle. It has all the desirable characteristics of a good grape for this climate - not so fine as a Hamburgh or a Muscat grown under glass; but I find that my friends, who eat both, forego the latter when the Hartford is ripe, and invariably put the native in their pockets to carry home. It is, too, a good grape to sell, as it ripens early, and brings a good price.

The Clinton is a good wine grape, and as such worth cultivating. It has the good traits of hardiness and productiveness every year.

It is the rage at present to extol the Concord. With me, it rots like the Catawba. The fruit ripens about ten days later than the Hartford; the wood ripens to a healthy chestnut color; the vine is free from mildew, and endures the coldest winter. Where it does not rot, cultivate it.

The Isabella is too good to neglect. The mode of cultivation heretofore recommended was to trench and manure, keeping the vine in a sort of hot-bed, inducing great growth and full fruiting the third summer. The crop was then fine and ripened, but the vine was rendered worthless. Its next crop was mildewed, and the summer pruning made this a certainty.

In my experiments for twelve years, under high cultivation, I find that the Isabelha rarely has ripened wood for next year's fruit perfectly. The exceptions have been very hot and dry summers, when the wood growth has been very slow. In rainy seasons the growth is succulent and porous, spotted with mildew, and in this state the fruit remains unripe and sour; but by taking off three fourths the fruit that sets on a healthy vine, even if growing in rich ground, both fruit and wood ripen without mildew, and that wood will bear a severe winter without covering. May we not then infer that overfeeding, overbearing, and pinching (any pinching or tampering with green shoots or leaves is unnatural and too much) originate mildew ? Mildew attacks a weak subject, and the vine is prepared for its attack by these weakening processes. I succeed beat by not manuring young grapes, by giving them another year to mature, fruiting-the fourth summer, and then permitting them to bear but small crops at first. Even after they are established, six bunches of grapes on a vine are worth more than twentv-four.

I guard all the green shoots and green leaves with care, thus giving the fruit ail the leaf covering the vine can afford it. The grape is a modest fruit, and likes to hide away and nestle under the leaves until it approaches maturity, and it finds its own way, in some mysterious manner, into the sunlight at the proper time. The European system of treating the grape is not suited to our climate nor to native grapes. The sooner we discard it entirely, the sooner we shall be ready to begin anew and go right.

In our hot summers the foliage of our fruit-trees and vines is of inestimable value, both to keep the plant healthy and vigorous and to sweeten and ripen the fruit. It seems to me so self-evident as to need no argument. If we could begin all over again and avoid these errors, go back to good healthy vines for our stock, I believe we could again raise Catawbas on the Hudson. But it is of no use to take the present diseased stock to work with, as We find that the seedlings of the Catawba have the same disease as their parent. This includes with me two varieties, Diana aad Iona, which I have hoped would be exceptions. Among the newer varieties are two, Creveling and Delaware, that prove hardy. The first has all good characteristics, and ripens so early that the wood always matures. But with both these varieties try the single-bunch theory, if you wish to have good fruit and plenty of it every year. W. A. Woodwakd.

Cornwall, N. T., January 20th, 1868.