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VI. An Account of a Method of hastening the Maturation 

 of Grapes, .% John Williams, Esq., 'in a Letter to 

 the Rt. Hon. Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. K.B. P.R.S.* 



SIR, 



At is a fact well known to gardeners, that vines, when ex- 

 posed in this climate to the open air, although trained to 

 walls with southern aspects, and having every advantage of 

 judicious culture, yet in the ordinary course of our seasons 

 ripen their fruit with difficulty. This remark, however, 

 though true in general, admits of some exceptions ; for I 

 have occasionally seen trees of the common white muskadlne , 

 and Hack cluster grapes, that have matured their fruit very 

 well, and earlier by a fortnight or three weeks than others 

 *>f the same kinds, and apparently possessing similar advan- 

 tages of soil and aspect. 



The vines that ripened the fruit thus early, I have gene- 

 rally remarked, were old trees having trunks eight or ten 

 feet high, before their bearing branches commenced. It 

 occurred to me, that this disposition to ripen early, might 

 be occasioned by the dryness and rigidity of the vessels of 

 the old trunk obstructing the circulation of that portion of 

 the sap which is supposed to descend from the leaf. And 

 to prove whether or not my conjectures were correct, I made 

 incisions through the bark on the trunks of several vines 

 growing in my garden, removing a circle of bark from each, 

 and thus leaving the naked alburnum above an inch in 

 width completely exposed ; this was done in the months of 

 June and July. The following autumn the fruit growing 

 on these trees came to great perfection, having ripened from 

 a fortnight to three weeks earlier than usual: but in the 

 succeeding spring the vines did not shoot with their ac- 

 customed vigour, and I found that I had injured them by 

 exposing the alburnum unnecessarily. 



Last summer these experiments were repeated ; at the end 

 of July and beginning of August, I took annular excisions 

 9f bark from the trunks of several of my vines, and that the. 



* From Transactions of the Horticultural Society, vol. i. 



exposed. 



