316 APPENDIX I. 



VINEYARD OF C. McKAY, NEAR CANANDAIGUA, N. Y. 



From the Horticulturist. 



"Some time ago, you may remember, you invited me to communicate to 

 you such facts for publication as I might have met with in grape culture 

 that would be likely to be of interest to the public. 



" I had then recently planted one acre of Isabella grape vines, pretty 

 nearly after the manner you had advised in the columns of the ' Genesee 

 Farmer.' 



" The piece of ground planted is twenty rods in length by eight in 

 width, and was planted five years ago last spring, in the following man- 

 ner : About the first of May I gave the land, which is gravelly loam, a very 

 deep ploughing as deep as possible without the aid of a subsoil plough. 

 I then measured it off into eight strips, or lands running lengthwise, their 

 direction being from north to south. 15 degrees east, and ploughed these 

 lands separately leaving the dead furrow in the centre of each, desig- 

 nating the places for the rows breaking up the yellow subsoil by 

 repeated ploughing, through the centre of each to the depth of nearly 

 two feet. I then went into these trenches with a stout team and scraper 

 and excavated holes a rod apart still deeper than I had ploughed, about 

 six feet wide and eight in length, leaving the subsoil taken from them in 

 the intervening spaces. 



" All this time I had my eye upon a drove of cattk (some eighty 

 head), which had died m this town the previous March and April, while 

 performing a pilgrimage from the far West to the New York market. 

 These I procured of the proprietor, and had them cut into pieces of con- 

 venient size, and hauled to the field and placed in the holes prepared for 

 their reception. There being one hundred and sixty holes, a ^ialf of a 

 carcass was placed in each. This being done, the holes were filled about 

 half full of good surface soil ; upon this I distributed as equally as pos- 

 sible among all the holes, sixteen heavy loads of decayed leather sha- 

 vings, from a currier's shop, the accumulation, as I was informed, of about 

 twenty years. A, sufficient quantity of surface soil was thrown upon 

 these, and thoroughly incorporated with them, to fill the holes rather 

 more than level with the surface of the ground. Now about a bushel of 

 well rotted stable zoanure, taken from under a stable, well mixed with 



