Manual of American Grape-growing

Abstract

THIS book is one of the series of rural manuals edited by Prof. L. H. Bailey, and it should prove of great use to both commercial and amateur grape-growers. The opening chapter, dealing with the “Domestication of the Grape,” is especially interesting. There are about fifty named species of the grape, most of them found in temperate countries. Of the Old World grapes only one species, Vitis vinifera, is cultivated for fruit, but of all grapes this is of greatest economic importance. Vitis vinifera is the grape of ancient and modern agriculture, and is the chief agricultural crop of Southern Europe and of vast regions in other parts of the world. The written records of its cultivation go back five or six thousand years, while the ancient Egyptians are known to have grown the vine for wine-making; the methods and processes of domestication, however, are now unknown. The records of the Now World yield information, on the cultivation of wild species of grapes, and the author describes the domestication process of the four species now extensively cultivated.

Manual of American Grape-growing.

By U. P. Hedrick. (The Rural Manuals.) Pp. xiii + 458 + xxxii plates. (New York: The Macmillan Co.; London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1919.) Price 15s. net.