THE GEAPE. 115 



den for 16s. per lb., while the very same variety grown at 

 Southgate, only a mile from Oakhill, were fetching only 

 Is. Qd. per lb., the difference in quality being traceable 

 chiefly to the superior care shown at the former place 

 in preparing the borders in which the vines are grown. 

 Formerly the vine was considered to be a very gross 

 feeder, the coarsest of offal not being thought too strong 

 or rich for its appetite ; and even so lately as in 1858 a 

 correspondent of The Gardener's Chronicle (the first 

 English horticultural periodical), after relating how 

 Napoleon I., when at a loss for gunpowder, in order to 

 secure a supply of saltpetre, had " middens " constructed 

 of " filth, dead animals, offal, and urine, with alternate 

 layers of turfy loam and old lime mortar," hazarded the 

 assertion that " his nitre bed was the very pattern of a 

 vine border," and that, " when the materials had been 

 turned over and over again for a year or two they were 

 exactly in a state to yield either gunpowder or grapes, 

 according as they were manipulated." This opinion, 

 however, was immediately and strongly controverted in 

 the same columns by men of science and experience ; and 

 the general opinion now seems to be, that calcareous ele- 

 ments in the soil are to be chiefly relied on, and that car- 

 rion is so unsuitable as a manure that, though the vine 

 to which it may be applied, if not killed at once (for vines 

 will bear a great deal of ill-usage, and adapt themselves 

 to very difficult circumstances), may produce a few crops 

 of large but coarse fruit, the eventual destruction of the 

 plant under such a mode of treatment is inevitable. Ano- 

 ther mode of enriching the soil, which commends itself at 

 once to reason as a most plausible system, is recommended 

 in a work published a few years back, which states that, in 

 most wine countries, all defective ill-formed bunches or 

 berries, with any superfluous shoots or branches, are re- 

 moved every year, about the end of June, broken into small 

 pieces, and buried about a foot deep around the vines. 

 Committed to the earth in this green state, they are de- 

 composed in less than 30 days, and return again to the vine 

 immediately to increase its vigour and maintain the soil in 

 proper condition, as the trees in a forest flourish for cen- 



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