Attention is called to the characters given by Bartram as distinguishing the European from the American species. The first difference that he mentions is in the shape of the fruit, that of the Vinifera being more or less oval and that of American species roundish or oblate. Recent technical descriptions of our American species give the fruit as spherical where the shape is mentioned at all. On the other hand it is known that most of the cultivated varieties of European grapes are oval. Does this mean that all of our cultivated American varieties which show oval berries, such as Isabella, Catawba, and others, contain Vinifera blood? It could not be said without careful study that this is true but it is certainly worthy of consideration. This point seems to have escaped the attention of our later-day botanists. The sexual status of the grape has always been a source of misunderstanding. The earlier botanists spoke of American vines as dioecious, that is, bearing staminate and pistillate flowers on separate individuals. In this, as was noted on page 98, they were corrected by Bartram, in so far as American species were concerned, he stating that the vines of America were polygamous (showing staminate and hermaphrodite plants). Bartram did not presume to speak as to the sex of the flowers of the Old World grape. Later it was determined that the cultivated varieties of Europe were always hermaphrodite and that staminate forms were unknown. Engelmann[121] explains this so well and with such apparent satisfaction that we cannot do better than quote him here. "All the true Grape-vines bear fertile flowers on one stock and sterile flowers on another separate stock, and are therefore called _polygamous_, or, not quite correctly, _dioecious_. The sterile plants do bear male flowers with abortive pistils, so that while they never produce fruit themselves, they may assist in fertilizing the others; the fertile flowers, however, are hermaphrodites containing both organs--stamens and pistils--and are capable of ripening fruit without the assistance of the male plants. Real female flowers without any stamens do not seem ever to have been observed. Both forms, the male and the hermaphrodite, or if preferred those with sterile and those with complete flowers, are found mixed in their native localities of the wild plants, but of course only the fertile plants have been selected for cultivation, and thus it happens that to the cultivator only these are known; and as the Grape-vine of the Old World has been in cultivation for thousands of years, it has resulted that this hermaphrodite character of its flowers has been mistaken for a botanical peculiarity, by which it was to be distinguished, not only from our American Grape-vines, but also from the wild grapes of the old world. But plants raised from the seeds of this as well as any other true Grape-vine, generally furnish as many sterile as fertile specimens, while those