iSyi.] EXTREMES IN GRAPE -GROWING. 539 



growing will coincide with us when we say that the most likely 

 conditions to produce fine Muscat Grapes are, — As a base, a rather 

 strong loam, so thoroughly drained that all rains and artificially- 

 applied water can pass freely from it and leave the soil in its normal 

 condition. During the season of growth and dry warm weather, 

 copious waterings to be applied, and their moistening eff'ects to be as 

 long preserved as possible by mulching the surface of the border, 

 bearing in mind that too frequent waterings and rapid evaporation are 

 also evils to be avoided as well as a dearth of water. When the 

 Grapes have arrived at the ripening stage, and the foliage and wood are 

 consolidated, and making less demand on the roots for moisture and 

 nutriment, we would cover the border, to protect it from the cold 

 autumn and winter rains in localities where these were heavy / and 

 anything like water constantly playing in the border and about the 

 roots then would be regarded as an evil. 



Where is the Grape-grower, whose observation and experience are 

 anything long or extensive, who has not witnessed the evil eff'ects of 

 puddle borders in the shape of mildew and other maladies 1 And if 

 such be the case, it cannot fail to be a matter of very considerable 

 interest to have more particulars regarding the Vines now in question. 



In Grape-growing, as in everything else, ^'extremes are dangerous." 

 There have been some very forcible examples of this — from those 

 Vines which have been literally destroyed from the eff'ects of carrion- 

 borders, in which for a very short time at first the Vines make 

 a vigorous but delusive appearance, and eventually fall into a 

 condition of atroj^hy, speedily ending in all but literal extinction to 

 those eases where the other extreme of elevated, light, shallow borders 

 maintain the Vine — a plant which requires substantial but simple fare 

 — in a state of perpetual starvation. The most outrageous extreme of 

 the former sort we ever came across was in Middlesex, in one of the worst 

 cholera years, where we were shown, by lifting a trap-door, a ditch 

 running parallel with the front of the Vine-border kept constantly full of 

 blood and off'al by contract with a city butcher. The stench was sicken- 

 ing ; and the idea was that of feeding Vines, which, on examining them, 

 were found suffering the most miserable death by literal poisoning that 

 can be imagined. This was avoiding destruction by starvation, but 

 rushing on death in the opposite extreme. And so it appears to us 

 that while the Grape-Vine very frequently suffers from borders that 

 are allowed to get too dry, and perhaps too much heated by artificial 

 means, there is imminent danger in rushing to the other extreme of 

 having water from a stream constantly percolating about their roots, 

 which must reduce the border to a puddle, and keep its temperature 

 at a minimum. The middle course we have all confidence in recom- 



