1873.] SUMMING UP. 543 



are in respectful wonderment wliether it is all serious or only a 

 pantomime. 



All the great shows of the year have been attended with success, 

 and been, on the whole, advances on former years, judging from the 

 reports. Eath, however, did not improve on Birmingham, and is an 

 exception from the fact of there being too many cooks spoiling the 

 broth. Those shows are a sort of Siamese twin affair, two managements 

 in one. One cannot work independent of the other, nor the two 

 together, and nothing but the buoyancy of public interest in garden- 

 ing could save the management from breaking down. Manchester 

 fruit-show is fresh in every one's memory ; it alone will in future 

 mark the year as that on which the Lambton bunch of Grapes was 

 shown. 



The war of the Grapes has seen another campaign nearly finished. 

 Unless the keeping battles be fought over again, there are a few sorts, 

 which might be counted on the fingers of one hand, which nobody 

 quarrels with, being faultless. There are other sorts to which faults are 

 universally attributed. It has lately become the fashion not to abuse 

 the faulty Grapes, but the stupid gardeners who cannot grow them. 

 We do not admire this style of criticism ; it simply gags discussion : 

 but where one has a bad case, the best course is, abuse your opponent's 

 attorney. The upshot will be that the faulty Grapes will certainly go 

 out of cultivation. Few now grow the old but excellent Grape 

 Chasselas musque, from its being such a determined cracker, a con- 

 stitutional fault — or the Golden Hambro, from its tenderness of con- 

 stitution. 



The Madresfeld Court, a magnificent Grape, has undoubtedly the 

 same faults as the Chasselas musque, and we have known it crack 

 grown in pots, with the laterals half cut through, or tightly pinched 

 with a coil of wire. Much can be done for it by inarching on other 

 roots, and it must be grown as an early Grape, instead of for winter 

 or autumn, so as to ripen in the heat of summer. We find it crack 

 least inarched on the Hamburg in an early house ; also as an autumn 

 Grape inarched on an early stock, the Eoyal Muscadine. 



Mr Simpson has done good service in calling so much attention to 

 the subject of low night-temperatures for Vines. A high night-tem- 

 perature is exhaustive and actually retarding to Vines, and other 

 plants as well, under certain circumstances ; as at night the Vine 

 ought to be recruiting strength for the following day's growth with the 

 light and heat of the sun. Of course there is a limit to the night tem- 

 perature under which it would be unsafe to descend. The same 

 shrewd writer has, we think, hit the mark about the potato disease ; 

 and he foreshadows the time when the Mid-Lothian farmer will 



