nong vines, indicating their worth to be seven hundred dollars at 6 per cent interest; and that from the trifling investment of about two dollars. Can any agricultural profit exceed this? And according to the sound maxim, that "what has been done may be done again under like circumstances," there is no telling how vast the agricultural revenue to all the South may be from this grape alone, if our citizens were once" wide awake to its great merits.'

But as the scuppernong juice is the basis for wines of every grade of excellence, and as I make them in quality and price from one dollar to six per gallon, indicating different degrees of excellence, the aforesaid profits might have been greatly enhanced by using doubly refined sugar as the safe-keeping, enriching ingredient in making the wine.

I prefer, however, bringing forward examples of wine made in the most simple and most safe way; or so made that none need fear imitating the process. For if any operate with scuppernong juice mixed well in tunning, or after putting into the cask with one-third good spirits, or the quantity Mr. Longworth advises in his letter of 1847, in Patent Office report, there is no danger but that the result will be a good safe keeping wine, or very excellent medicinally and otherwise.

Indeed, spirits are safer than sugar as the ingredient to be added to any juice for wine. And therefore, the people of Madeira, and other vintners of Europe, making the least wine, do wisely as to their profit at least, in using a plenty of spirits. In using sugar more attention is required to rack off the wine from one cask into another, and otherwise to guard against acidity and injury, or spoiling. But with about one third good spirits when incorporated by shaking in the cask after the juice of any kind of grape has been poured in duly prepared by straining through folds of a woollen cloth; the result, in a month or so is a good safe-keeping wine. After it is drawn off by a fauset a little above one of the lower ends of the cask on its side, some quantity of sediment will be found indicating that a gentle fermentation had taken place. But any one wishing a wine of highest grade of excellence from genuine scuppernong juice, can have it by using at least three lbs. of doubly refined loaf sugar per gallon, and racking from one cask to another several times in the course of a few months. And in this case it will be found that fermentation has taken place, and alcohol generated in the wine as the pure safe-keeping principle, or such as pervading all vegetable creation as the preservative part thereof. Indeed, by adding either spirits or sugar to make wine, it is merely increasing the very principles or pure ingredients in grape juice that constitute the basis nature has provided for enriching and preserving the wine. For, destitute of alcoholic and saccharine principles, there can be no wine.

By good spirits for making wine, I mean either brandy divested of any peculiar taste by age, or any kind of strong spirits, as new brandy or whiskey divested of any peculiar taste by being doubly rectified through charcoal and sand. I rectify so as to make the best of pure spirits out of any strong spirit liquor. The wine therefore has the peculiar taste of the grape from which it is made; and this taste is one of the chief excellences of the wine. I have tried distilling grape juice and mixing the brandy thereof with the same kind of juice as that distilled. But I cannot myself perceive that the wine made with such in

gredients has a decided superiority over that made with any sort of well rectified spirits. I here remark, that as to preserving the peculiar exquisite zest of the genuine scuppernong grape in its wine, nothing is superior as an ingredient for enriching and safe keeping, to doubly refined white sugar. And the reason appears to be, that nothing approaches so near the taste of this grape as the delicately fine taste of said sugar. And the wine made from this sugar and genuine scuppernong juice is as limpid as water and as exquisite in taste as can be well imagined. Gentlemen and ladies in Raleigh, our capital, to whom I sell it yearly, call it nectar. I call it Scuppernong Madeira. But to make it genuine, the juice must be from the genuine grape or scuppernong proper. I call it scuppernong proper, to distinguish it from the dark colored scuppernong so called, or a sort of muscadine, and also to distinguish it from many spurious kinds of white grapes called scuppernong; or such as sometimes are raised from scuppernong seed.

The seed grapes, too, like the seed of apples very rarely produce any thing like the original. I have had quite a number of seedlings bearing from the genuine scuppernong, and of almost all colors and sizes; the fruit, though all resembling the muscadine family of grapes; and of all I never found but one vine that produced fruit any way near the excellency of the parent vine. The only way to propogate the genuine, I find, is by layers and grafting. For scuppernong cuttings seldom or never succeed. As there are many spurious kinds of scuppernong in the South that tend to disgrace the genuine, I close this article, written in rather a desultory way, by describing the

In

Genuine White Scuppernong Proper. From most reliable information, this grape has its origin and name from Scuppernong Island, in Roanoke river, in lower part of North Carolina. I presume its greatest perfection is had in its native place and state; though doing well, I learn in most locations south of latitude 271, as in Florida, as a most intelligent gentleman writes me. Its vine stem and leaves resemble the common muscadine of the woods, plentiful in most parts of our Southern Union, stem hard and smooth. But while in shape of the leaves this resemblance is marked, their color is a whitish light green instead of dark. The berries like the muscadine and fox grapes, grow in clusters. general three or four compose a cluster; but I have frequently counted near twenty. The genuine scuppernong grape is round, skin smooth, color a bright lightish green when unripe, but ripe, it assumes a whitish yellow hue, though some berries when ripe, in color are a 'greenish white and almost transparent. The berries generally about three inches diameter, but not unfrequently I have measured them three and a half inches round, and in two instances four. A plate of genuine ripe scuppernong grapes are so aromatic as to perfume a room with a delightful fragrance.

.

ART. V.-SOME REMARKS ON AGRICULTURE AND OUR AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS.

THE first cultivator, the Robinson Crusoe of his day, says Mr. Carey in his ingenious work upon the Past, the Present and the Future, has neither axe nor spade. He works alone. Population being small, land of course is abundant. He may select for himself without fear of his title being disputed. But after the appropriation of soils, the extension of industry and numbers, a state of things altogether different begins

to exist.

Though, in its beginning, agriculture be a rude pursuit, requiring but little of industry or of intelligence, in its progress through a later stage of society, and as population becomes dense, it arises to the rank of a science requiring and admitting of the highest development of skill, the most extensive researches and profoundest judgment. The primitive husbandry of the Hindoos and that of the best class of English farmers are almost at an infinite remove from each other.

There are various adequate causes for the slow and interrupted progress of agricultural science all over the world. In new countries like America, the extent and fertility of lands have rendered any other than the most moderate attention, in general, unnecessary. In all countries the impossibility of any combinations among farmers, or division of labors such as is found in the mechanical and manufacturing pursuits, and which have carried them so soon to their present high degree of perfection, is felt and acknowledged. Besides what is insisted upon by Mr. Malthus and his followers, and we believe with great truth, the later "applications of capital" to land, or in other words improvements are not attended with so high a per centage of profit as those of an earlier date. Though by careful attention to soils their productiveness may long be preserved, their resuscitation when exhausted is a hopeless and often unproductive business. Indeed, Adam Smith states the principle broadly, that agriculture is not so much intended to increase as to direct the fertility of the soil.

Though, on a comparison with other pursuits, agriculture be found to possess no particular advantage in regard to pecuniary profits, and, in fact, to be behind many others in this respect, yet has it in all ages, even the most ancient, been the subject of general preference among men and nations. The Bible affords us many beautiful pictures of nomade agricultural life. The early princes of Greece labored at the plough with their own hands, and the great poets and philosophers of that country have not thought it unworthy of their muse or the highest philosophy. The genius of Homer and Hesiod, and the science of Theophrastus are recognized here. The Romans interwove agriculture curiously in their religion and superstitious rites. Their most distinguished statesmen and generals had patronymic names, derived from that of some vegetable of which their ancestors were the successful producers. The leading men of the state toiled in the fields, as Cincinnatus, Curius, Dentatus, Fabricius and Regulus. Thus was it as Plinny held that the earth took pleasure in being cultivated by the hands of men crowned with laurels and decorated with triumphal honors. The names

of Cato, Varro, Virgil, Columella, Pliny, Palladius, &c., belong to the bibliography of agricultural science.

Well has it been observed by Dr. Smith, the beauty of the country, besides the pleasures of a country life, the tranquility which it promises, and, wherever the injustice of human laws does not disturb it, the independence which it really affords, have charms that more or less affect every body, and as to cultivate the ground was the original destination of man, so in every stage of his existence he seems to realize a predilection for this original employment.

There is one consideration, however, which should be brought home to the agriculturalist and enforced upon every occasion, and it is, that although, despite the teachings of Mons. Quesnai, he be not the onlyhe and his art are in all the world, without question, the greatest-producer of wealth. The gross product of agriculture will always greatly exceed that of manufactures and commerce, even when they are at their greatest advantage. Thus, in Great Britain, four millions of agriculturalists raise a sufficiency of food for themselves and for fourteen millions besides, who are employed in trade and manufactures. In France the agriculturalists are 2 to 1 to other classes, in America 12 to 1, in Poland 20 to 1.*

Let it be remembered, too, that agriculture and agricultural improvements make the only permanent additions to a country's greatness, or provide for all the contingencies of the future. No country in which the science of agriculture is carried to high perfection, and which presents the picture of general agricultural development and improvement, has ever yet or can ever be swept away by those causes which have overwhelmed and destroyed many of the great commercial and manufacturing powers, leaving often only to conjecture the sites which they occupied. What vestiges remain to us of Tyre and Sidon, of Palmyra and Alexandria, Venice, Genoa and Pisa, Florence and the Hanse Towns, great commercial and manufacturing communities of bye-gone days?t

When the scourges of the Roman Empire swept down from the north into the fertile fields of the Mediterranean, the law of arm rather than of agriculture usurped the sway. Industry in Europe was paralyzed, and upon its ruins rose the iron rule of the feudal system which resolved the great masses of society into an absolute and hopeless bondage fatal to all improvement. Fields were converted into forests for chase. The domain of the king reached over all the lands in his realm, and he distributed them out to his favorites to be held at his arbitrary will and pleasure. Thus did those lordly chieftains, independent of all the world but their sovereign, and brooking little dependence even upon him, assert their territorial rights and parcel them out in minor proportions, to the vassals, leet-men, yeomanry or people, with ingenious tenures, which exhausted the products of labor and enterprise in the rapacious exactions of a Suzerain lord and master. But when the feudal system tottered upon its base and fell at last in a mighty ruin, scattering its castellated remains over Europe, the world began that rapid stride in the career of progress which has crowded into a generation the events of a previous thousand years.‡

* Allison. + Adam Smith. + Commercial Rev. iv. 443.

The escape of science from the thraldom of bigotry and bypothesis, the regeneration of man from the tyrannies of despotic power, the growth of towns and cities, the enlarged foreign policy and commerce of states, the immense facilities of internal communication, have all been instrumental in advancing to a high state of improvement the agriculture and agricultural classes of most civilized nations.

From the earliest permanent settlement in America, agriculture became the chief employment and support of the people. The first colonists, where the land would admit, went to work in good earnest, and where it would not, as we are told by Mr. Burke, they went out to struggle with the monsters of the great deep. The colonial charters, and in fact the whole policy of the mother country, however absurdly she may have repressed the spirit of manufacturing and commercial industry, were always attended with the very best designs towards the promotion of agriculture. As this pursuit in the infancy of the colonies came to be interrupted by Indian wars, internal dissentions, disease, or the wild search after precious metals, there were induced periods of destitution and famine, of which history not unfrequently makes mention. For whatever else a people may be dependant upon their neighbors, especially when removed by the breadth of oceans, to no extent and for no period is it possible to be dependant for the articles of daily food and nourishment, without at times the most frightful results. It would require all the navies in the world to transport a sufficiency of food to support the people of Ireland a single year.

The date of the first growth of the colony of Virginia is fixed in 1613 or 1614, when the system of community of property in all the results of the year's industry was set aside, and the lands parcelled out among settlers in proportions of fifty acres each. Then began the advance of agriculture and population."

The agricultural products of the United States have been classed as follows:

1. Those which constitute vegetable food, as wheat, flour, rice, indian corn, rye, peas, beans, oats, potatoes, &c.

2. The products of animals, as beef, tallow, hides, butter and cheese, pork and lard, or the animals themselves when exported.

3. Cotton and sugar.

4. Tobacco.

5 Other products.

We shall make a few cursory remarks upon each, beginning with:WHEAT. This staple was brought from Europe by the first colonists, where it was known and in use from the earliest periods. Its peculiar adaptation to the soil and climate of the Middle and Western States has caused its production to augment in an extraordinary ratio. Perhaps one-half of the present crop is now realized west of the mountains. The unlimited territories of the Union in the north-west, including even Oregon, which have yet to be taken into cultivation, many of the greatest fertility, render it almost impossible to estimate the future amount of this crop.

There are no means of determining the annual growth of wheat in the United States prior to the census of 1840, except by approximate cal