"restrictive system" is adopted, and it will take place with infinitely greater rapidity under the other. To meet this difficulty the roots have been walled in; but this only aggravates the evil, for the moment the roots touch the wall, they descend to the bottom of the border, where they are far from the genial influences of heat and air.

Another objection brought against this system is, that one vine takes much longer to furnish a house with fruit than a number do; but this can be met by planting supernumeraries, to be renewed as the permanent one advances.

A third objection is, that variety of grapes is desirable in a vinery, and that this cannot be had where only one vine is grown. Grafting or inarching will meet this objection; and it is well known that many delicate sorts of vines grow better on other than their own roots.

Thus it appears that the only serious objection to the one-vine system is the difficulty of getting a border of sufficient scope for the roots of a vine of such proportions as will fill a good-sized vinery with fruit-bearing wood; but where such can be had, I fully approve of the "extension system," and will now proceed to give a detailed account of one of the best and most successful examples of it known to me, and with the origin of which I had some connection.

In the year 1838 I became acquainted with the late Mr Peter Kay of Finchley, near London, and up to the date of his melancholy death I continued to discuss with him, verbally and by letter, every question that bore on the culture of the vine. He always maintained the great importance of what he called "carrying a large amount of foliage on the vine" as the only sure way of keeping up its stamina, and acted on this himself. I used to

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reply, that practically it was not expedient to allow more than two leaves to grow beyond the bunch. This, with the sub-laterals stopped at one leaf, I considered sufficient, and pointed to the example of the houses at Oakhill, near Barnet, then and for twenty years so ably managed by Mr Davis, who produced splendid crops of grapes, ripe in March and April, for many years in succession from the same vines, and which he pruned to one eye, and left only one leaf beyond the bunch. I thought the system I adopted, of leaving two leaves, sufficient; Mr Kay thought otherwise, and left from four to five. Carrying his ideas still farther, he said he believed that better still would be the plan of planting only one vine in a large house. This I urged him to do, and in 1855 he built a span-roofed house 89 feet long, 16 feet wide, and 9 feet 6 inches in height to the apex. In this house he planted a single black Hamburg vine in March 1856, the roots all outside, and the border prepared 89 feet in length by 15 broad. Beyond this border are the borders of other houses, giving it scope for its roots little if at all under a quarter of an acre. The vine is trained with a leading stem from the centre of the north-side wall up to the apex, and down to the south wall, for the house runs east and west. From this main stem five laterals are trained towards each end of the house-one at the apex, the others equidistant between the apex and the walls. The last time I saw it in company with Mr Kay was in 1862. I saw it again in 1864, when it had a full crop of excellent grapes, weighing, as I have since learned, 476 lb. In 1865 it bore 400 lb. of grapes; in 1866, three hundred bunches, some of them weighing 5 lb. It took seven years to furnish the house with bearing-wood. The girth of the stem where it enters the

house was, in May 1864, 14 inches. Mr Osborne, an old pupil of Mr Kay's, has ably carried out his preceptor's mode of managing this noble vine; and I trust it may long remain in robust health, a fitting monument to the memory of one who had few equals as an enthusiastic cultivator of the vine, and one who stands alone as having built a large house and planted it with a single vine to test a theory which some writers of the present day are starting as a new one.1

Having thus placed the "extension" or one-vine system before my readers in the light in which I have long viewed it, I will, as briefly as the subject will admit of, take a review of what is said against the "restrictive" or many-vine system. The opponents of this latter system of vine-culture take their key-note from Mr Cannell, nurseryman, Woolwich, who, when gardener at Portnall Park, was so unsuccessful as a vine-cultivator that he has chronicled the death of all the vines he then had charge of, after passing through nine stages of decadence, which Mr Tillery of Welbeck has compared to Shakespeare's seven ages of man, and described in very good verse in the 'Nottingham Guardian' of March 15, 1867. Mr Cannell's vines, we are bound to believe, died; but I am quite certain he is in error when he attributes their death to the "restrictive" or one-rod system. I know many very old vines that have been cultivated on the "restrictive system," and that have continued in perfect health for many years. At Oakhill, near London, Mr Dowding planted a number of vineries more than forty years ago.

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1 We learned from Mr Osborne, in March 1869, that the girth of the stem of this fine vine was then 17 inches, and that it was in excellent health and vigour, promising a large crop of fruit.

2 Mr Tillery, who was a genial man and a good gardener, died in 1878.

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I became acquainted with them in 1837, and for twenty subsequent years Mr Davis, who succeeded Mr Dowding, produced the most regular and finest crop of grapes the kingdom from these same vines, yet they maintained their health, vigour, and fruitfulness. They were planted one vine to each rafter, and the system of pruning was the "close-cutting" one, by which only one eye was left at the base of each lateral.

There is a vine, referred to in this work, at Wrotham Park, which is eighty years old, and has all along been cultivated on the "restrictive system," for it only clothes two rafters; yet I learn from Mr Edlington, who now has charge of it, that it is in as full health and vigour as any of the younger vines, and bears equally fine fruit, and has a stem 1 foot 7 inches in girth. True, the border it grows in has been once renewed in the time. In regard to this old vine, I make the following extract from a letter from Mr Edlington. He writes: "The old Hamburg produces fruit equal to the other and younger vines in the same house. Last year they were truly magnificent, surpassing all other grapes on the place.” 1

I might go on multiplying instances to prove that vines neither become unfruitful nor die off in nine years, as Mr Cannell's did, because they are not allowed to extend the area of their foliage annually, but I think such unnecessary. The fact is, that the vine is a very docile plant; and if its foliage is kept free from the attacks of insects-if over-cropping is avoided, and the wood well ripened if the border is made of moderately good materials, and the drainage sufficient, the vine will continue in health and vigour for fifty years under any of those systems of pruning and training that are prac

1 I saw this vine in May of this year, 1879, with a splendid crop on it.

tised by gardeners of intelligence, whether that be the "restrictive" and close-pruning system, or the "extension" and long-spur system.

I therefore close this chapter as I began it, by saying that there is much truth on both sides of this question.

Where it is necessary to have circumscribed borders, as is generally the case, I would plant a vine to every 6-feet run of a vinery, and grow two rods from each plant. This would give such vigour to the roots as would react on the branches in such a way as to yield both good bunches and berries, while at the same time a border 20 or 30 feet wide would afford them sustenance for many years.

Where there is ample scope for the roots to run unchecked and uninjured for 150 or 200 feet, then by all means adopt the one-vine or "extension" system, inarching or grafting on to this patriarch all the varieties required.

THE DISEASES VINES ARE SUBJECT TO.

In the front rank of these stands the disease known to gardeners as "shanking." This great enemy to grapegrowing makes its appearance just as the grapes are changing from their acid to their saccharine state, and it arrests the transformation at once, and the berry remains perfectly acid, and becomes shrivelled in a short time. All that the eye can detect in the case is, the decay of the little stem or shank of the berry; and what appears strange, it more frequently attacks grapes that are not forced early than those that are. Many able physiologists have attempted to explain its cause and cure, though as yet with but little success; and it is with diffidence