VINE SOILS AND VINE MANURES. 445 



that almost independently of any attention that may be devoted to 

 them. It would be easy to name a place near Bangor, where grapes 

 in the most extraordinary quantities are grown year after year, and 

 where, too, at times we have seen them of very superior quality. And 

 what are the conditions of their cultivation? Why, first, that the 

 substratum of the border is a dried rivulet, from which the tiny 

 mountain stream has been diverted for the purpose of building the 

 vinery, though in storm times it overflows and floods the border, laying 

 it under water two or three times in the season for a day or two 

 together ; and secondly, that the drainage of the border is of the most 

 complete description not an ounce of superfluous water hanging for 

 many hours in the soil after the storm has abated. Indeed, it may 

 almost be laid down as a rule that you cannot over- water the vine, so 

 long as the water is not cold and can have free egress from the 

 border. 



In an indirect manner the evidence above cited shows the indis- 

 pensable necessity of complete drainage for the vine border. You may 

 make it on the bed of an occasional rivulet, so long as the water is not 

 dammed back, so as to become stagnant ; but let the water once hang 

 in the soil, and every chance of success in the cultivation of the grape 

 is at an end. Now in the valley of the Thames and in that term we 

 include its course from Oxfordshire to the Nore you may make vine 

 borders as elaborately as you please, you may procure the finest soils 

 and the best manures, and yet, if you do not confine the roots by con- 

 creting the bottom and walling the sides of the border, they will 

 immediately pass through it into the red sand and gravel beneath. So 

 convinced was the late Mr. John Willmot of Isle worth of this fact, that 

 for many years prior to his death he abandoned the making of vine 

 borders altogether ; and, merely trenching the ground over and adding 

 a barrow-load of fresh compost to each vine at the time of planting, 

 he grew, if not " sensational " grapes, such as commanded the best 

 price at all times in Covent Garden Market, which may be regarded as 

 a complete proof of the success of his plan. Journey we now to the 

 confines of Hertfordshire, to the hills adjoining Barnet, Finchley, and 

 Colney Hatch ; and there nothing more is often necessary than to pro- 

 vide proper drainage, trench the ground, dig out a hole, and plant the 

 vine, and success is certain. These may be considered the natural 

 conditions of the vine ; and yet there are other soils, to external 

 appearance equally suitable, in which the vine will not grow at all, or 

 so indifferently as to be almost worthless. The gardener of a 

 nobleman in Gloucestershire, a person of considerable intelligence, at 

 the recent (1869) Horticultural Congress at Manchester, endeavoured 

 to account for this by attributing the failure to the presence of magnesian 

 limestone in the soil ; but, unfortunately for this theory, the vine in 

 its natural state delights in the calcareous rock, while some of the 

 finest grapes in Britain are growing in the soil taken from the side of 

 a limestone rock. In the face of such evidence of course the theory 

 falls to the ground, as being altogether untenable. 



