In 1854, two years following its report of E. W. Bull's "new seedling," the Concord, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society showed in its exhibits another grape scarcely less worthy of note than the Concord. It was a hybrid between the Golden Chasselas and the Isabella produced by John Fisk Allen of Salem, Massachusetts. The new variety, the Allen's Hybrid, mentioned in a preceding paragraph, had some intrinsic value but, of more importance, was the first introduction of its kind and started similar work which gave us many interesting and some valuable grapes. Soon after the production of Allen's Hybrid, E. S. Rogers of Salem, Massachusetts, and J. H. Ricketts of Newburgh, New York, began to give grape-growers varieties, the results of hybrids between _Vitis vinifera_ and _Vitis labrusca_, so promising that for a time enthusiasm and speculation ran riot. Possibly at no other period has the interest in grape-growing been so keen as during the decade succeeding the introduction of these hybrids. It was the "golden era" for the grape propagators. One old nurseryman tells of carrying, during this boom, over a thousand dollars worth of rooted grape cuttings on his back from the nursery to the express office. Though there was no panic among grape-growers as the result of speculation in hybrids, lovers of grapes the country over were greatly disappointed in the hybrid varieties. The fruit of many of the hybrids produced at this time is of superior quality and many of them are still grown by amateurs. But the vines of all first generation hybrids with Vinifera produced so far, lack hardiness, vigor and usually productiveness; they are susceptible to fungi and the phylloxera and many of them must be cross-pollinated to secure fruit. It is only when the blood of the native species greatly predominates, as in Delaware, Brighton and Diamond, that we have obtained sorts of commercial value through the admixture of foreign blood. But the interest aroused by Allen's Hybrid still continues and in every part of the country may be found some man who hybridizes grapes with the hope that through well planned crosses or a lucky chance he may obtain the grape of grapes for America. Such attempts, stimulated by the hybrids of the fifties, have produced most of our American varieties.