I reciprocate the expressions of personal regard with which Mr. Prince prefaces his reply to my article in the November number of the Horticulturist. My relations with him, since the date of our first acquaintance, have been those of personal friendship. There is no necessity, in the discussion of questions such as are at issue between us, for indulging in personal vituperation, and I have no disposition to do so. I impute to him no intentional misrepresentations in reference to the Delaware grape, or my position in relation to the vine itself, and collateral questions growing out of the present discussion. I think, however, I can safely affirm that he is a gentleman of pretty strong prejudices; positive in the assertion and maintenance of his opinions; exceedingly reluctant to give them up or acknowledge an error of judgment or fact; and, withal, peculiarly liable to be mistaken, and to forget, in vindicating a present theory, what were those he formerly advocated:. My object, in this communication, is to point out some of his errors; show the inconsistency of his present with his past professions; and vindicate myself against reflections that can not but be regarded as personal and any thing but complimentary, though probably not intended to be offensive.

Mr. P. does not regard me as "sustaining the point he has assailed." That is, I suppose, he does not understand me" as insisting that the Delaware is, beyond all doubt, an indigenous variety. My first impressions, founded on the hasty conclusions of those I supposed competent to judge, were that it was probably a foreign variety. Investigation soon satisfied me" that it was not the foreign variety it was claimed to be. All subsequent observation, and the almost unanimous testimony of those acknowledged to be authority on such points, together with the fact that, up to the present time, it has not been identified with any known foreign variety, have forced me to the conclusion that -it must be a native; and for the last seven years such has been my opinion, though I have not sought to obtrude it upon the public. But this is not the important point in controversy. Whether it is or is not a native, is of no manner of consequence, if it meets all the requirements as to hardiness, Ac., that could be expected of a native. This is the question in the decision of which horticulturists and the public at large are interested. That it possesses these qualities Mr. P. denies.

He assumes that it is a foreign variety: all experience proves that in our climate such vines, without a single known exception, are not suited to out-door culture; and all the characteristics which render them thus worthless he attributes to the Delaware in their broadest.sense. This is the point Mr. P. makes. On this point I join issue with him, and at the same time respectfully dissent from his assumption that I coincide with him on the other, or at least do not oppose it.

To argue at this day that the Delaware possesses all the characteristics of a native variety, as regards hardiness, productiveness, adaptation to exposed culture, &C, or that it is a first-class fruit, indeed the grape of the country, would almost be equivalent to casting an imputation upon the intelligence and judgment of the American horticultural public. The testimony on these points is so overwhelmingly in the affirmative that no summing up is necessary. Take the number of the Horticulturist in which the last communication from the pen of Mr. P. appears. Read the fair and candid article of the editor; the report of the Cincinnati Horticultural Society, signed by such men as Robert Buchanan, Dr. Mosier, and J. E. Mottier; the reported proceedings of the Fruit Growers' Society Of Western New York, with the testimony of P. Barry, H. £. Hooker, Mr. Ellwanger, and other competent and honest fruit growers. How do these-gentlemen testify? and how does their evidence comport with the position of Mr. Prince? Or, if this will not suffice, go outside the pages of the Horticulturist, and (to say nothing of the vast accumulations of testimony in its favor the last few years have adduced, embracing the opinions of nearly every prominent horticulturist in the country) note the recent corroborating evidence that every where abounds.

See sagacious vintners planting it by the hundred, and preparing to do so by the thousand; observe the awards at fruit committees, at horticultural and agricultural exhibitions; hear the testimony borne by competent judges as to the superior quality of the wine it produces; read the report of the Wine Growers' Association of Missouri, which on the 7th of September last unanimously resolved, "That it is our opinion, from what we have seen, that when the Delaware has been sufficiently tried, it will be found to be the best table, market, and wine grape in America;" peruse the flattering encomiums of the horticultural press of the country, and the conclusion must be irresistible that Mr. P. has taken upon himself a herculean task when he essays an effort to write it down in public esteem. To assign it an inferior position among grapes, he will find will require something more than the mere ipse dixit of even so distinguished a horticulturist as he is acknowledged to be, and that, too, were he not, as happens to be the case, so strong a witness against himself.

Mr. P. admits the force of the extract from his letter of November, 1855, but pleads it is not fair to quote it against him, as the opinion there so positively expressed was the result of an error in confounding the Ramsdell (a New England Fox grape) with the Delaware, and his conclusions were arrived at from watching the developments of that variety under the supposition that it was the Delaware. This, certainly, is making a plausible showing; and, were he correct in his statement and recollection, the explanation should be received by all fair-minded persons as perfectly satisfactory, and release him from responsibility for an opinion founded on erroneous premises. But, unfortunately for our friend, he is entirely mistaken in regard to this matter, and his beautiful structure falls to the ground because it has no foundation to sustain it. The language quoted was not the result of an error in confounding the Ramsdell and the Delaware. The letter quoted from was written in the fall of 1855, and Mr. P. never received a single vine of or through me till the spring of 1856; and the only additional lot received of me (and those through which the alleged error arose) I purchased for and forwarded to him in the fall of 1857; two years after the letter from which I quoted was written.