but occasion their increase in size and strength, and thus afford additional security against casual injury.

Whenever trees are found to produce,shoots, but no fruit, a remedy will generally be found in removing the earth and cutting off some of the deep large growing roots, particularly the tap root, when found.

183

ON THE VINE.

THE stated opinions of Bradley and Hitt are, that a dry calcareous soil is the best adapted for Vines, as it furnishes the greatest produce in fruit, and gives the finest flavor.

It however appears, by recent experiments, that the Vine not only grows most luxuriantly, but also healthy and fruitful in a soil replete with animal

manure.

Mr. Speechly, in a treatise on the Vine, recommends a compost made of one-fourth part of gardenloam, one-fourth part of rotten-turf, one-fourth part of sweepings and scrapings of pavements and hard roads, one-eighth part of rotten cow dung, and one-eighth part of vegetable mould from rotten leaves.

He also recommends that this compost should form a bed or border of two feet and a half deep on a bottom laid shelving outwards from the stem, with a sufficient fall to drain off water.

No doubt this system of preparing borders is a very good one; but as Mr. Speechly correctly remarks, stagnant water is very prejudical to Vines, and for this reason, I think his compost is too close

in its texture, and too retentive of moisture to be the most productive of fruit; for although the Vine requires a large supply of water, a frequent and fresh supply from the surface is more congenial to its nature than a constant retention of water by the soil, which must nearly approach stagnant water in its effects. I therefore recommend beds or borders for Vines to be formed on the principles I have before explained for the peach and other fruit trees, compounding the stratum for the roots of one-third part of the scrapings of a road made of or repaired with flint gravel, or coarse drift-sand, one-third part of rich garden-loam, or rotten-turf, one-sixth part of rotten dung, and one-sixth part of wood-ashes, or soap-ashes; this stratum to be covered with from six to nine inches of garden-loam, and on this to lay two or three inches of gravel.

When Vines are planted in this manner, the roots will not deviate from the stratum formed for them, unless, from great dearth of moisture, they are driven lower to find it, which is easily guarded against by a regular supply of water; and from the looseness of the soil, the consequences resulting from stagnant water will be more effectually guarded against.

It may be remarked that the fertile qualities of a loose gravelly or sandy soil is soon exhausted : but, by the method recommended by Mr. Speechly, of occasionally watering the border with the draining of a dung-hill, or vegetable and animal solu

tions or extracts, the carbonaceous principle is replenished and sustained in any degree.

Many different methods have been recommended for raising and planting Vines; but although the Vine is of rapid growth, there is no fruit tree more checked or retarded in its advance to the fructiferous state, by being injured and curtailed in its roots; and, consequently, to raise plants for transplantation, there is no mode in any respect equal to that recommended by Mr. Speechly, which is as follows:

Select a branch of the last year's growth, of rather a small than a large size; let the upper part be cut off sloping with a sharp knife, about a quarter of an inch above the eye; and about three inches below the eye cut off the wood horizontally, great care being taken to leave the wood smooth at the bottom; the other part, too, should be taken off with a clean stroke; the cutting being thus prepared, make a hole and insert it, placing it so that the eye may be covered about a quarter of an inch deep.

The cuttings may be taken off any time during winter, and laid in moist earth until the time of planting, the best season for which is March. And if then planted in pots filled with a light sandy loam, plunged in a hot-bed, and frequently watered, they will seldom fail to produce the best plants for transplanting.

It appears that whenever a Vine is deprived of its ususal supply of sap by the loss of roots, &c.

the bark and sap vessels contract and become inflexible; and when this is the case, although the roots recover, and furnish a luxuriant supply of sap, the old stem is incapable of expansion: thus it is often seen that a shoot of one year's growth far exceeds in size the stem from which it springs, although three or four years old.

When cuttings are planted of ten or twelve inches length in the usual way, they remain a year or two before a quantity of sap is supplied, and consequently the old bark and vessels become fixed; and notwithstanding they may throw out some strong shoots after this time, when taken up for transplanting, the roots are unavoidably reduced, and the supply of sap again lessened, and the vessels contracted.

And when plants are raised by layers in pots or in borders, they are suffered to remain connected with the parent plant a long time after they strike root, and being thus nurtured by both, furnish very strong branches; but these, on being separated from the old branch, are thereby deprived of half their supply of sap, and in consequence the vessels contract, become inflexible, and incapable of extension, like cuttings.

When plants are raised from a single eye, as recommended by Mr. Speechly, the roots form immediately round the eye; and the young stem striking directly from them is without old bark or old vessels, and being raised in a pot is readily turned out with all its roots entire and uninjured,