Note 227 — {41} Fifthly, Of Plants.

Wood says the “vines afford great store of grapes, which are very big, both for the grape and cluster; sweet and good. These be of two sorts,—red and white. There is likewise a smaller kind of grape which groweth in the islands” (that is, of Massachusetts Bay), “which is sooner ripe, and more delectable; so that there is no known reason why as good wine may not be made in those parts, as well as Bordeaux in France; being under the same degree.”—New-Eng. Prospect, chap. v. “Vines,” says Mr. Graves (in New-Eng. Plantation, Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 124) “doe grow here, plentifully laden with the biggest grapes that ever I saw. Some I have seene foure inches about.”—“Our Governour,” adds Higginson, “hath already planted a vineyard, with great hope of encrease.”—New-England’s Plantation, l. c., p. 119. Vitis Labrusca, L. (fox-grape),—for some principal varieties of which, see Emerson, l. c., p. 468,—furnished, probably, most of the sorts known favorably to the first settlers; but V. æstivalis, Michx. (summer grape), also occurs on our seaboard.