538 THE GARDENER. [Dec. 



water, there to prove that great A^ine-growing is dependent on some- 

 thing like hydraulic action. 



If the running stream has the power of sending its waters to con- 

 stantly percolate among the roots of the Vines at Berkhampstead, it 

 would certainly be interesting to know if the cultivator has the 

 means to check or entirely cut off the irrigation at intervals of time, 

 such as during autumn and winter, when of course the stream will 

 sometimes, if not always, run at a higher level, and when the Vines 

 are at rest, and perhaps Grapes required to hang on them throughout 

 the autumn and winter. Confident as we are that the Vine at inter- 

 vals and certain stages of its annual growth has an immense capacity 

 for water in conjunction with thorough drainage, we are certain that 

 our readers will agree with us that the particulars referred to above 

 are due to the public, after propounding what must appear a theory 

 the most extreme in connection with a branch of horticulture now 

 more than ever and increasingly important, from the numbers who 

 are groping their way through a maze of the most conflicting state- 

 ments to success in Grape-growing. 



Some years ago, very superior examples of IMuscats were exhibited 

 in London from the Denbies Gardens, Surrey, and the success in 

 their case was attributed by our contemporary to the borders being 

 chambered and heated ; and thenceforth heated dry borders were the 

 necessary conditions to the production of large golden samples of 

 Muscat Grapes. Now we have circumstances the opposite chronicled 

 as productive of the same results — a constant percolation of running 

 water, and, as a necessary accompaniment, coldness ; for we are con- 

 cluding that the stream at Berkhampstead is not from a boiling spring : 

 and in the interests of Grape-growing we most respectfully suggest to 

 our venerable contemporary that it would be most interesting to us, 

 and a great multitude of men engaged in Grape-growing, to have 

 more particulars of the conditions which it has so briefly referred to in 

 the case of the Muscats in question. 



Our ideas of the conditions, so far as soil and water are concerned, 

 necessary to the most certain production of good Muscats, would lead 

 us to take every possible precaution against water, from whatever 

 source, finding its way constantly into the border and about the roots ; 

 and if compelled to make a Vine-border near to a stream, we should 

 do all that could be done to protect the border and the roots against 

 its constant inroads, just because our experience of constant water in 

 cultivated soil is that it soon reduces it to a pasty puddle, in which no- 

 thing but semi-aquatic plants can possibly exist ; and Muscat Vines 

 can scarcely be placed in such a category. We believe that ninety-nine 

 out of every hundred men who have had experience in Grape- 



